November 2020 Doings!

 Hey'a, everyone! We are officially into the holiday season and the final month of 2020. Thank goodness. I'm not going to pretend that all our troubles will end with the dawn of a new year, but I am glad that at least we're in a season that feels a little more hopeful.

(I would also like to say that this is the first time in at least two years that I've actually done a November Doings! post instead of merging it in with December's Doings! So in that respect, I am doing great.)

Writing!

• November is, of course, National Novel Writing Month, so every minute of writing time I had was dedicated to working on my NaNo novel, the sequel to The Midnight Show. Given that, you would think the first draft would be done by now, right?
• No. It is not.
• (Incidentally, I also didn't hit 50K, but I wasn't exactly aiming there either, so . . . it's ok?)
• I would like to say that this is solely because I had fewer minutes of writing time than I expected — which is true. A lot of my time this month went into freelancing and job searching — and not just time, but also a lot of mental and emotional energy, which I'll probably talk about later. And, of course, we had the start of the holiday season, which takes up more time.
• The other part of it is that . . . well, I have this pattern that I tend to fall into when writing series. It goes something like this:
  • Me: *has an idea, gets really excited*
  • Me: *writes a simple, single-plot first book with either a single POV or dual POVs trading off on the same plot*
  • The Book: *is easy and fun to write; gets finished really fast*
  • Me: Hey, that was fun, and super chill. *shares or publishes that book*
  • Other people: Hey, we like this book!
  • Me: Wow, not only did I really enjoy writing that, other people seem to like reading it. I should write a sequel.
  • Me: *comes up with sequel idea*
  • The Sequel Idea: *has more POVs, more plotlines, and is generally more complex*
  • The Sequel Idea: *gets last-minute changes to what I planned*
  • The Sequel Idea: *takes more time and effort to write than I expected or than the first book did*
  • Me: *surprised Pikachu face*
• Every. Time. This happens every. single. time. I'm not sure if this is a case of my being unable to learn from my mistakes or if I just keep hoping that this time will be different. And it never is. It happened with Blood in the Earth, as you all noticed. Before that, before I started publishing, it happened with my Berstru Tales (and got worse with every sequel, to the point where I decided it would be easier to go back and rewrite the stories from the beginning rather than keep trying to salvage the current Book 4), and it happened to my epic fairy tale retelling series (Book 2 of which took literally two years to write), and I have no doubt whatsoever that if and when I write a sequel to Mechanical Heart, it'll happen there too.
• So, yes. In summary: sequels are hard, and I am continually surprised by this.
• But!
• I did write 32,874 words spread out over about 18.5 chapters, and I think I'm about halfway through my outline, so . . . that's good. We can still finish this by the end of December. It'll be great. Just darb, as Dayo would say.

 Reading!

• I usually expect my reading to go down in November, but I actually had a pretty good month. It was helped along by the fact that I had a lot of books available that were low-energy, not quite comfort reads, but close enough. A lot of that reading was also graphic novels, manga, or comic compilations, so . . . there's that. (I actually just now realized that I only read four traditional books this month; oops.)
• Anyway. I finished all the published books of Delicious in Dungeon and found them fairly enjoyable. I still like the early books best, but there are some good interactions, and we get backstory on characters, which is nice. And now I just have to wait for the last two books to be released. I also read Seven Little Sons of the Dragon, a collection of short stories by the same author, which was . . . well, the same sort of mixed bag as most anthologies. My favorites stories tended to be the ones that seemed like they might've been inspired by traditional myths or legends.
• Finishing Delicious in Dungeon meant I could move on to the other manga I was really excited about, Magus of the Library. I've read the first two books so far, and I'm really enjoying it. I mean, a magical library and librarians, an Arabian-inspired world, a lot of book-based enthusiasm . . . what's not to like?
• Moving back to Western graphic novels and comics: I read the third Adventure Zone graphic novel and enjoyed it quite a bit more than the first two. You can tell that the players have gotten to the point where they're coming to care about the characters other than their own and the world they inhabit, and that makes the story they're telling better, in my opinion. I also read both Strange Planet comic compilations (which were awesome; if you haven't read them and/or don't currently follow Nathan Pyle on Instagram, you should fix one or both of those things) and Tom Gauld's Department of Mind-Blowing Theories comic compilation. Both of these comic series are full of a type of humor I like quite a bit — one that pokes fun at humanity's oddities while also celebrating them, and yeah. 10/10, would recommend.
• Finally, we come to the traditional novels! I started out with two rereads: Randall Munroe's What If? and Terry Pratchett's A Blink of the Screen, both of which I liked about as much on the reread as I did the first time around. Then, towards the end of the month, I read Shirley Jackson's We Have Always Lived in the Castle, which has been on my TBR for a while. I'm not entirely sure how to feel about it; the writing quality and the storytelling quality are both off the charts, but I really didn't like any of the characters at any point in the story. Then again, I'm not sure you're supposed to like the characters. It doesn't seem to be that sort of book.
• And then we did a complete 180 and finally got around to Kat Cho's Wicked Fox, which is not a standalone as I thought but rather the first book in a series, and I am annoyed. Not as annoyed as I could be; it had a very satisfying ending. I'm just tired of thinking books are standalones and then discovering otherwise. But the story was good; it was nice to get a setting outside of America or Europe, and I think the author did a good job weaving in traditional Korean mythology with the modern world. I will say that I didn't entirely buy Miyoung and Jihoon's romance . . . but I more than bought their friendship and Jihoon's friendships with others, and that's more important to me anyway.
• And we finish up this summary with a book that's half comic and half traditional text-based novel, Hyperbole and a Half. While I don't and never have followed the blog, I know of it via general internet culture and more specifically, Jen of Epbot and Cake Wrecks. And somehow it (and Allie Brosh's new book, Solutions and Other Problems, and The Bloggess's books) popped back up on my radar, and since I'm trying to read more outside the fantasy genre, I thought I'd pick it up. And while it's certainly not my favorite book I've ever read, it's still a good read. I don't know if I'll read it again (I may or may not), but I'm glad I read it once. You feel me?

Watching!

• Unlike my reading, my watching-of-stuff-that-isn't-short-YouTube-videos went way down this month.
• I'm still crawling my way through Critical Role. I think I got in maybe two episodes this month? The problem, generally speaking, is that I am not enjoying the Avantika arc, and while I like Fjord as a character and Travis as a player, I really don't care that much about Fjord's backstory. I'd be almost tempted to just read summaries and skip this arc, but I also don't want to miss out on small, fun moments. (Like Fluffernutter. I finally got to that bit, and while it's funny out of context, it's hilarious in context.) So . . . here we are.
• In terms of actual movies or similar, all we've watched are holiday shows (namely, the Charlie Brown Thanksgiving and Rudolph). We did finally get Disney+ to work with our TV, though, so maybe that'll change soon? (Probably not; Christmas movies take precedence in December. But there's always the possibility.)
• Also, I just wanted to say that I discovered the Lockpocking Lawyer on YouTube this month, and his videos are . . . strangely addictive? They've pretty much been my procrastination method of choice as of late. LPL has a lot in common with Rybonator in that they have very calming voices and their videos are very focused on actually doing the thing rather than being clickbaity and repeating stuff a bunch of times, and it's just really nice. I also feel like I know more about security measures now, which is nice. And if I even need my characters to pick a lock, I know more than I used to about how that works too!
• (I have also learned that you should never trust MasterLock or Hotel Safes, but yeah.)

Life!

• This is always the hardest section of these Doings! posts. I have easily accessible records of what I wrote, read, and watched, but when it comes to life stuff, I basically have to rely on my memory. And my memory is . . . sporadic.
• So. Most of the month was taken up by three things: writing, which I already talked about, and job searching and freelancing, which I said I was going to talk about. Not that there's a whole lot to say.
• I had one interview this month, which went well, and I'm going in for a second with the same place soon. So that's exciting. I've never gotten to a second interview before.
• As far as freelancing goes, it's nice to be doing design stuff with an actual purpose and project again. The difficult bit has been figuring out how to work well with a client when I'm the one doing the communication instead of someone else communicating with them and relaying requests to me. So that's been a bit of a learning curve, and a rather stressful one at that, which is what's taking most of the mental and emotional energy I was talking about.
• On a happier note, we celebrated my birthday this month with lunch/dinner at my favorite Mexican place and a pecan pie cheesecake, both of which were DELICIOUS.
• Speaking of deliciousness: Thanksgiving was excellent. A lot quieter than most years, since we were having it at home with just the four of us instead of with the whole Bible study group, but even that was nice in some respects. My dad borrowed a smoker and made smoked turkey, which turned out quite well. I made sourdough rolls and an apple-cranberry pie (and pie crust for my mom's pecan pie), both of which were also a success . . . even if the apple filling didn't cook as well as we thought it should have. (We're not sure what's up with that.)
• And, of course, Thanksgiving meant that my younger sister came home from college, and due to her college's adjusted schedule, she won't go back until the new year. It's nice to have her back in the house. I've missed having someone to chat about books and stories and stuff with, plus I got the Sentinels of the Multiverse game for my birthday and now she and I can play that together. We can also play with my roommate via Zoom, which we did last Sunday. It works astonishingly well.
• The last exciting thing I remember: I did another round of testing on my sourdough bread recipe combination, and I think I found a combo that I like. Essentially, I use the ingredient proportions and mixing method from the old recipe and the kneading and shaping method from the new one. The result is a loaf that has a good sourdough tang and is fluffy and domed enough to match my expectations but solid enough that you could use it for sandwiches. So that's my true baking victory of the month.
• I think that pretty much covers it. Odds are, I'll remember something I should've included about five minutes after this post goes up, but if that happens, oh well.

December Plans

• It's Christmas time! Which means sending out Christmas cards (I have my list; just gotta act on it now), hurrying to find or make Christmas gifts (though I'm ahead of the game this year for half the people I'm giving gifts to), and an abundance of Christmas cookies (many of which I will hopefully be making).
• It also means Christmas music, which I'm enjoying in moderation. (The tragedy of my current WIP is that it's set in the summer, and so I absolutely cannot listen to Christmas music while writing it, even though Christmas music and swing/jazz go together super well.)
• Speaking of the WIP, I intend to finish it this month. At the very latest, it needs to be finished early in the new year. Best-case scenario, I have it done before Christmas so I can use the week after Christmas to work on my New Year's short story. But I'm still going to be freelancing during that time, so . . . we'll see what happens.
• I am also hoping to get in a good bit of Sentinels while my sister is home. That would be delightful. Time-consuming. But delightful.
• That pretty much covers it, I think.

How was your November? Any exciting plans for December? Do you also have problems with being consistently surprised by the difficulty of sequel-writing?  Please tell me in the comments!
Thanks for reading!

October 2020 Doings!

Oh, look. It's November now. Everyone still alive? Reasonably sane? Fabulous. We all know that October basically lasted 0.05 seconds, but we're going to recap it anyway, because that's what we do.

Writing!

• October was kind of a mixed month on the writing front. To start on a happy note, I finished Blood in the Earth (huzzah!)! It's going to take a lot of editing, and the last page of my notebook is literally a list of all the things I want to fix when I rewrite the story. Including but not limited to: fixing the timeline, reconfiguring at least one subplot, establishing the existence of certain things that prove essential to the climax, and, oh yeah, reworking characterization in the first half of the book to be consistent with the end because my relationship with most of the characters in this book can be summarized in the following meme:

• But the point is: it's done, and the climax turned out really cool and genuinely kinda cinematic (like, I want there to be a movie or an anime of this book so I can watch the climax onscreen), and the ending is a good balance of bittersweet and truly happy, and all those unexpected character twists spawned possibilities for two or three short stories or spin-off novellas, so we're all good.
• Anyway. Having finished BitE, I jumped headfirst back into working on my D&D campaign so I could get it written and ready to the point where I probably won't have to work on it much at all in November, other than the usual prep for actually running sessions. Well, I do have one side-quest I might need to write, but, worst-case scenario, I'll improv. It'll be fine. (Fiiiiine.)
• Then, once I was satisfied with where my D&D campaign was, I switched gears and started prepping for the sequel to The Midnight Show! For those who missed my Know the Novel post last Friday, the TMS Sequel is a retelling of Snow White and Rose Red and maaaaaaaybe one other secret fairy tale. Bastian is back with a new case, and now his sisters are in the picture too . . . except that one of them is missing.
• So, yeah. I started drafting the novel pre-November, but it's also my NaNoWriMo novel, which is fun. (NaNoWriMo is going. I'm not making par for 50K most days, due to some other responsibilities that I'll talk about later in the post, but I'm making par for "Finish the book by the end of the month so you can edit in December," and that's what matters.)

 Reading!

• After a light and rough reading month in September, we've hit the rebound!
• I finished rereading Warden and the Wolf King and Fellowship of the Ring, which were both excellent as expected. I've missed Middle Earth more than I realized. I'm looking forward to The Two Towers — though I'm going to have to reevaluate my current reads a bit to figure out how to fit it in. I started reading Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell without realizing what kind of book it was, and I don't think I want to try to manage it and LOTR at the same time. I've become more open to reading two books at the same time (in a specific combination, where one is long and more of a classic feel that takes more focus and one is shorter and more modern and doesn't require a great deal of energy to enjoy), but yeah.
• I continued reading both the Delicious in Dungeon and Seven Deadly Sins manga series. Delicious in Dungeon got put on hold for a bit because I wanted some spookier or eerier reads for Halloween, but I'm still enjoying it, and I just picked book six up on Wednesday. So that's fun. Seven Deadly Sins, I'm having mixed feelings over. Most of the mixed feelings are about Ban — at first, I thought he was cool and interesting, and then it was like "No. He's a storming jerk." And then it was like "Shoot. He's still kind of a jerk, but also maybe not? And he is sort of interesting after all?" And it basically ended with "I'm attached to this character, but I'm really salty about it." I have this problem semi-frequently when it comes to manga and anime, for the record. Anyway. I'm four books in, and I'm not sure whether or not I'm going to continue the series. We'll see.
• And then we shift into my Halloween reads! Some of which ended up being less Halloween-ish than I expected. My reread of The Screaming Staircase was delightful, of course, though a little bit of the spookiness was lost in the reread. And The Hazel Wood was haunting and excellent, if a bit slow to get me really interested. I did not see the twists coming. It's an excellent take on portal fantasy, let me just say.
• Aunt Maria was not what I expected, but it was also excellent. DWJ references the book a lot in the essays in Reflections, so this has been on my TBR for a while. I'm glad I finally picked it up. My other DWJ read, Wild Robert, was smaller and weirder than I expected — a fun short story, true, and funny as well, but not my favorite DWJ. I was hoping to fit one more DWJ in here, Fire and Hemlock, but that didn't happen, sadly.
• To finish up this summary, we have two murder mysteries that couldn't be more different. I finally dipped my toes in the Harry Dresden series with Storm Front, and I have mixed feelings — basically, it's a fascinating world, an excellent story, and some genuinely interesting characters, but it's also a bit more than expected in terms of how dark it is and how blatantly it discusses certain topics. Like, I knew it would be darker than most of my reads. I knew it involved those topics, which is why I didn't read it ages ago. I just didn't expect how much. And now I'm torn between wanting to know more of the story (especially since I've heard the books do keep getting better) and . . . yeah.
• Anyway. The other murder mystery was pretty much the exact opposite of the Dresdenverse: A Morbid Taste for Bones, the first of the Chronicles of Brother Cadfael. I have to say, why did I not pick up this book sooner? It's historical fiction, true, but the good kind. And it kind of has the feel of . . . I don't know, like someone distilled the vibes out of Robin Hood and Ranger's Apprentice, poured it into a 12th-century monastery, and then added a heaping helping of murder mystery. Brother Cadfael is great, and the rest of the characters are interesting, and I am absolutely reading more of this series.
• Finally, a quick update on my reading goals.
  • I've met my overall goal for number of books read: 100 out of 99, as of Wednesday morning. So that's great. Not that it's going to stop me reading more, but y'know.
  • With the addition of A Morbid Taste for Bones, I've hit ten non-speculative fiction books, which means I have two to go. I did request several autobiographies from the library recently, though, and I'm planning to reread What If? soon, so that should be doable. With luck, I'll pass that goal too.
  • And I'd already hit my goal of twelve books written before I was born, but I've gotten all the way up to 16 at this point — still counting the whole Redwall series as one book. At some point, I should go through and see how many of those 16 are DWJ books, but we'll save that for my end-of-year recap.

Watching!

• So, I've officially seen both Men in Black and The Matrix now, so that's fun.
• I actually really liked Men in Black. Were there elements I wasn't a fan of? Sure. But it's kind of the sci-fi equivalent of urban fantasy, and it has a good balance of humor and serious moments. Sure, there were some cringe bits and some gross moments, but it was still a lot of fun. And I really appreciate that even the occasional secondhand embarrassment came out of J being genuinely excited or curious or wanting to help people (or occasionally the fact that he's too busy getting stuff done and thinking for himself to care about what everyone else in the room things, which I can also get behind).
• The Matrix was interesting and weird and . . . I mean, I can see why it's such a cultural phenomenon and why it's considered such a major sci-fi movie. It is a genuinely good movie. And, I mean, yes, it is in many respects a fairly standard Chosen One narrative, and a wish-fulfillment-y one at that, and pretty much everyone except Tank and the Oracle feels like they're going out of their way to be as dramatic as possible 100% of the time. And I could've done without some of the body horror. But there were some good twists on the tropes as well, and overdramatic or not, the fight scenes get full points for style.
• Other than that, it's pretty much the same as usual. Still watching Firefly with the fam (two more episodes in, and I'd forgotten how much I enjoy the episode Bushwacked). Still slowly making my way through Critical Role and kind of amused by the fact that Travis himself seems so genuinely freaked out/concerned by all his backstory-related stuff that's happening. It's like . . . honestly, I relate. But also, it's funny.
• (But I'm still only to . . . 37? 38? Something like that? And that's with watching since May-ish. So, yeah. Slow going.)

Life!

• So, the most exciting thing that happened this month is probably that my family finally got proper internet. For context: for the past three years, ever since my family moved back to Virginia, we'd been working off a mobile hotspot because we didn't have any other internet options available. And it worked, mostly — true, it was tiresome having to schedule our online activities around whether we had high-speed or low-speed data, and true, it was a bit annoying to have to go somewhere else (or else disconnect all but one device) when we needed to do a video call or download updates on a device or anything else like that. And, of course, it was kind of problematic in March and April when the libraries and other places we'd usually go to use the WiFi closed. But, y'know. It worked, and it was better than nothing at all.
• But now we have actual internet, thank God. And it is so nice to be able to just . . . do stuff. To not have to worry about whether we're on fast or slow data, or whether I can get to the library to download stuff I need to download, or whether or not my D&D group can actually meet via Zoom or if we have to do it via voice on Discord. I can apply for remote-work jobs without wondering if I'll be able to make meetings and complete projects if I get it. I don't even have to worry about whether or not I'm slowing down someone else's internet activities with mine. It's wonderful.
• Anyway. The other exciting thing that happened this month was that I almost had a job. Almost. There was an actual offer — well, not exactly. There were some emails, and an (astonishingly short) interview, and then a statement: You can start training on [date] at [time]. It felt off. So I emailed back to find out things like How much are you paying me, and What about benefits, and Why exactly do you think I need three months of training when I could've done most of what you want me to do before I went to college? And through his response to those questions and some conversations with a very helpful family friend with plenty of business sense, we figured out, in short, that this company was trying to pay (or, more accurately, underpay) me as a freelancer while having me work as if I were a full-time employee. Which, my friends, I was having none of. 
• So, at the suggestion of the very helpful family friend, I emailed back to point out the discrepancies and give the company a chance to try to correct themselves. The response to which was, in short Hello, I think you'd be a better fit somewhere else, good luck, goodbye. So that was that, and I have no regrets.
• And then I went through interviews at two other jobs and didn't get those either, which is a bit disappointing. Both of them were much closer to what I actually want to do, and with companies I would've actually liked to work for. But it is what it is, and, as I already said, now I can apply for remote-work jobs, and even freelance for a while if I so choose. (Which I am doing a little bit of right now; a friend of a friend's family needed some logos and brand work done, and that friend's family pointed him to me. So that's my other big project at the moment.) And sooner or later, something will work out. God knows what's up.
• Anyway. On a happier note, I finally finished the cloak I've been working on for over a year, and I got to wear it to an actual event. My church did a drive-through Trunk or Treat, and I signed up to man a trunk — which basically meant dressing up, decorating, and then sitting there and waving to people as they drove through. It wasn't the most exciting time, plus it rained, but hey! My cloak turned out well! I think I'm still going to make some more adjustments; namely, I'm going to add a second fastener (possibly two more, one of them hidden), and I'm going to add more reinforcement to keep it from stretching out. But it's comfortable to wear and doesn't threaten to choke me, so that's good. (I don't have any good pictures at the moment, sorry.)
• I also made two pies (one pecan, one cheddar-pear), pretzel bites, and the first stage of improvements to the new sourdough bread recipe. As it turns out, weighing ingredients is exactly as overrated as I thought it was, and there's also no reason whatsoever to literally stick your hand in the bowl to mix it when there's a machine a yard away that can do the same thing but better. On the other hand, tipping the loaf out of the Dutch oven halfway through but not putting it on a tray or something when it goes back in the actual oven does not solve the problem of "the bottom crust is super hard" and, in fact, makes it much worse, in that it burns the bottom crust. So that's a thing we're not going to do next time.
• On the D&D front, one of my groups didn't meet at all in October, though we did meet this past Tuesday, which was a fun session — I finally got to use Toll the Dead, and I managed to stay out of melee range of the aberration that nearly killed our druid, and we met an NPC who was pretty interesting, and we finished a quest line, all in one day. It was great. In the other campaign I don't run, we've met a little more often and made a bit more progress, but the most exciting thing is that our group has an actual name now. We're officially the Light Bringers, which I'd say is a pretty snazzy name.
• And in Defenders of Serys (aka the campaign I do run), we spent more time than I expected on one piece of the story, but it's fine. We did officially make it out to see at last, we've had the first two thirds of our first pirate battle . . . and I remembered why I usually don't run big combats. But it's fine. I have very patient (and also terrifyingly effective at times) players.

November Plans

• It's NaNoWriMo. What do you think I'm doing?
• Ok, technically I'm not exactly doing the full 50K. I'd like to get a full 50K, but if I do, it'll be something along the lines of 35K first draft and 15K rewrites. But, as I said already, I'm working on the sequel to The Midnight Show, and it's going to be great.
• That said, even thought I'm not going for the full 50K, I am going to take a month's hiatus from regular blog posting. There'll be one or two posts for promo things, like the Perry Kirkpatrick Black Friday book sale, but that's all.
• Outside of writing, it's back to another round of job apps. Plus the freelance logo project, which is pretty interesting. We'll see what happens on that end.
• November is also Thanksgiving, which is going to be kind of weird. It'll be the first time in a long while that we've had it at home and not with our Bible study. I really am disappointed that we won't get to have the full gathering or anything like it, but it is what it is.
• Also my birthday's in November, so, y'know, that's a thing.
• In whatever spare time I have left, I need to start thinking about Christmas presents, especially if I'm going to make anything. Which I might. You never know. And I get to start anticipating listening to Christmas music, which is quite exciting.

How was your October? Any exciting plans for November? Are you doing NaNoWriMo? Please tell me in the comments!
Thanks for reading!

September 2020 Doings!

 Well, here we are. Solidly into fall, and three-quarters of the way through 2020. As always, there's some Doings to report, so let's go.

Writing!

• I AM BASICALLY ALMOST DONE WITH BLOOD IN THE SOIL/EARTH!
• (It only took me two years and two months to get to that point . . .)
• But yeah. BitS/E and my two D&D campaigns have been my main focuses this month, writing-wise, and I've been really pushing to get to the end of Blood in the Soil/Earth. And I am ALMOST THERE. By which I mean I have two, maybe two and a half scenes left, and I'll likely finish for real sometime in the next few days.
• Also, I wrote 2.3K words on BitS/E on Wednesday because I'd gotten to the really exciting part of the climax in which various characters come into their own and I didn't want to stop until all the thoughts in my head were on paper. And then I wrote another 1.3K words on one of my D&D campaigns. I don't think I've written that many words in one day in months. (Not since I wrote the end of The Midnight Show back on June 8, to be exact.)
• D&D campaigns are also going well, for those curious. I have all three paths outlined for the campaign I'm actively running, and everyone seems to be having fun running around and exploring a new city and preparing to hunt pirates. I also have a pretty good idea, I think, of which of the three paths my players are going to choose. (If nothing else, I have a very good idea of which path they're probably not going to choose. Though, y'know, they very well could surprise me.)
• As far as the campaign I'm just writing goes, progress has slowed down a little, but it's fun too. It's a very different story and encounter structure than that of the Defenders of Serys, simultaneously more and less linear. I'm also having to figure out how to combine puzzles (of a sort, at least) with combat, which is an interesting challenge. (I'm also homebrewing a bunch of stuff, mainly monsters and magic items, and that's fun too.)
• And, of course, we had the Silmaril Awards this month! I got to host the Most Magnificent Dragon category, and I'm happy to say that it went off more or less without a hitch. If you didn't get to read this year's awards, you should definitely go check them out, see who won, and enjoy all the fabulous ceremonies. You can find the complete list of ceremonies, in order, here on the website.

Reading!

• This was a much lighter reading month than last month, despite my high hopes of doing lots of pre-Silmaril Awards rereading. (I think that's because I tried to force it instead of going with what I was really in the mood for. So that was a mistake.)
• I only read one and two halves actual books this month. The first half was finishing Crimson Bound, which I actually started last month. I stand by my initial assessment of the book: it had potential, but it really didn't measure up to what I wanted it to be. Instead of maintaining the intrigue and myth, it got bogged down in romance, angst, and drama.
• The other one and a half were my reread of the second two Wingfeather Saga books: The Monster in the Hollows and The Warden and the Wolf King. Both were, of course, good, though Monster took me much longer than it should have. (Again: I don't think I was in the mood for it most of the time I was reading it.) I did gain a new appreciation for Sara Cobbler's subplot, though, so that's lovely. Technically I'm still reading Warden, but I'm reasonably close to done at this point.
• The rest of this month's reads? All graphic novels and manga. I have to admit, it was really fun to explore this medium more (and appreciate all the lovely artwork).
• The three actual graphic novels were all based off D&D podcasts: two off The Adventure Zone, and one off the first Critical Role campaign. I definitely liked the Critical Role one (Vox Machina: Origins Volume 1) better, but that may be because I'm already familiar with (and attached to) the players and DM behind the characters and story, so I had a better idea what to expect in terms of style. (I also might've had overly high expectations for TAZ, since I'm used to Critical Role and my personal experiences with D&D, and those seem to have a very different tone than TAZ.)
• I also started reading two manga series: The Seven Deadly Sins (because I have a friend who likes the anime) and Delicious in Dungeon (because it sounded fun). I'm not terribly crazy about the former, but I'm really enjoying Delicious in Dungeon, or at least the first three volumes of it. It really is a cool perspective on dungeon-crawling-style adventures and RPG worlds, plus it's very focused on food and friendship. So, y'know, several of my favorite things in one story.
• Finally, I have restarted my Lord of the Rings reread! It is going . . . slowly. I'm once again trying to journal the reread, and I think I might need to not do that — I sometimes don't read it even when I have time for a chapter because I don't want to have to write stuff about it afterward. But at the same time, I started the journaling thing and now I feel like I should finish it. Gah.
• As a quick update on my reading goals:
  • I'm currently at 87 out of 99 books overall, which means I'm ahead of schedule. And once I finish Warden, I have a lot of quicker reads coming up, so I'm confident I can finish on time.
  • I'm still at nine non-speculative fiction books out of my goal of twelve, so I need to get busy with that. Part of the problem may be that I haven't been in the headspace to read Lewis or Chesterton's nonfiction works like I intended to at one point. Still, that's only about a book a month to hit my goal, which should be more than manageable.
  • As for my final reading goal, I have hit my goal of twelve books written before I was born, thanks to The Hobbit and Beauty. Very few of the books I ended up counting towards this goal were ones I planned to read at the start of the year, but y'know? I shouldn't be surprised. I'm very much a mood reader, after all.

Watching!

• So, I finally convinced my family to give Firefly a try! And they didn't hate it! So that's good!
• (Not that I thought they would hate it, since I wouldn't have suggested it if I did. But there's always that little bit of concern, y'know?)
• Anyway. It was really fun to get to watch some of the show again. We just did the first double-episode, but people seemed open to watching more, and I'm hopeful we'll do that soon.
• On the downside, I forgot how many awkward scenes there are with Inara, even in just the first episode. Gah. I would ask if there's a point at which watching those kinds of scenes with your parents in the room becomes non-awkward, but I find them awkward even when the family isn't there. So. Yeah. (Plus, I'm caught in the "Well, if I bring it up, then it's more awkward, but if I don't somehow show that I am Not Actually Enjoying This, they'll think I'm ok with it, which I'm not, what do I do, panic" cycle. So that's a thing.)
• We also watched Clue, which was fun! None of us had seen it before, but I was pretty sure I remembered that my roommate liked it, and it was on Prime as part of a promotion, so we decided to give it a try. And I do think it was a good choice; I enjoyed the humor, and I'm almost always down for a good murder mystery.
• Besides that, I'm still slowly working my way through Critical Role. I am quite liking Caduceus, much more so than I expected. And Caleb remains my favorite character. It's also fun watching this and knowing comparatively little about D&D tactics, so while people in the comments of the videos are getting mad about how this character should've done that instead of what they actually did, I'm just watching and being like "Yeah, that seems like a thing this character would do" (or sometimes "Yeah, that's what I would do as a player if I had a cool new ability I wanted to try out").

Life!

• As you can see from the picture: I got a new bookshelf! It's huge, and it's really meant more for an office or a library or something, but I absolutely do not care in the slightest. It is immense and beautiful and may allow me to not need another shelf until whenever I eventually move out. And I know I am not maximizing the space on it as well as I probably could, but it's fine. I can rearrange again in November or December if I really want to.
• On a less cheerful note: something that I technically knew but which hadn't really registered for the last four years is that cooler weather in an older house with an actual yard means Every Weekend Is Yardwork. Or deck work. Or otherwise outdoor work. We haven't even started cutting up fallen trees or raking leaves yet, and it's already a thing. Not that I'm complaining, especially since I've gotten off easy in terms of the amount of work I, personally, have had to do. (There are many benefits to Saturday afternoon D&D sessions, as it turns out.) It's just . . . still kind of a lot. And I am not an outdoors person or a lifting-heavy-things person in the slightest. (I'm also not a fan of anything that interferes with my meal schedule — yes, I'm basically a taller-than-average hobbit, how'd you guess?)
• Aside from that, we have, of course, the continuing saga of the job search. I've had a few interviews, though most of them went nowhere. I did have one yesterday that seemed very promising, though? So maybe the saga is almost over? If not, well, there's something hopefully happening next month that may let me cast my net a little wider (and expand my skill portfolio even further).
• I'm also back to working on my cloak, hoping to have it done in time for Halloween stuff. All I have left is the hood and some trim/edging/stabilization stuff, so that doesn't seem like an unreasonable goal.
• Aaaand I tried a new sourdough recipe, and I have very mixed feelings about it. On one hand, I severely dislike actually making it. It requires mixing very sticky dough by hand (literally; you're supposed to stick your hands in it to mix it rather than use a stand mixer or even a wooden spoon), and has to be tended every half hour for several hours out of the day, and all the measurements are in metric by weight, which — look, fine, maybe it's more accurate or whatever, but, (1) my kitchen scale is old, so all my weight measurements are almost certainly off, (2) I can't even measure some of the smaller quantities, (3) it's a lot of hassle, and (4) I do not care. I just want to make and eat bread. On that note and on the other hand, the bread is delicious and way lighter and fluffier than the bread I usually make. So that's a struggle. I'm hoping to try to combine the recipes sometime to get a version that gives maximum yumminess for minimal effort, but I haven't had time due to the Every Weekend is Yardwork thing. (I may manage today, though, if all goes to my plan.)

October Plans

• I AM GOING TO FINISH BLOOD IN THE SOIL/EARTH. I am also going to officially decide on a name. Hopefully.
• Once that's done, I'll take a short noveling break and then I may or may not start writing my next book. I'd like to. I have a Midnight Snow sequel in mind, and I think it'll be fun if I can get the details worked out. (I do need to plan stuff well before I start writing, though, because I want — and need — this to be another short project like TMS.)
• I also get to start thinking about Halloween stuff! I signed up for my church's drive-through Trunk or Treat, so now I need to figure out how to decorate the back of my car in a fantasy-ish manner. Or possibly steampunk-ish, but I'm leaning towards fantasy because that gives me a wider variety of costume options to work with and will allow me to adapt more to whatever the weather happens to be.
• As far as reading goes, I'm going to continue my LOTR reread and my ventures into manga and graphic novels, and I'd like to do some of the rereading that I didn't end up doing in September. Plus, there's the Return of the Thief release, which I am SO PSYCHED FOR.

How was your September? Any exciting plans for October? How do you feel about manga and graphic novels? How would you go about doing a fantasy-themed trunk for Trunk or Treat? Please tell me in the comments!
Thanks for reading!