July 2021 Doings!

 

Hey'a, friends! It's the end of the month, which means it's time for another Doings! post! On a side note, I'm going to officially make a slight adjustment to the Doings! schedule: going forward, Doings! will be posted on the Friday closest to the last day of the month. I've been using this schedule for a fair bit already, but I wanted to make it official because I had gotten a few questions about why I was posting a week early.

Now, with that out of the way, let's get on with the post!

Writing!

• The official cover reveal for Gilded in Ice occurred earlier this month, along with the announcement of its upcoming release on September 24 as part of the Frosted Roses Arista Challenge Group, and the preorder launch. If you want to preorder the ebook, it's available via Amazon; for a paperback copy, you'll have to wait until the release proper.
• Speaking of the release, you can now both sign up for the blog tour and request ARCs. If you want to help support the release of Gilded in Ice or any of the Frosted Roses books, this is a great way to do that! You can find all the book and tour details on this post.
• Aside from the Gilded in Ice cover reveal, this month has been very quiet on the writing front. I've laid my plans for the next few adventures in my D&D campaign, though I've made less progress writing them than intended. And I did most of the work on the paperback cover for Gilded in Ice, which isn't writing, but is writing-adjacent. Otherwise, though, I've been taking it easy and spending time catching up on reading, gaming, and spending time with family and friends.

Reading!

• Despite the fact that I said I was taking this month off to catch up on reading, I didn't actually read that many books in July — only six. Of course, of those six, one was fairly long . . .
• Most of this month's reading was dedicated to finishing the Green Ember series and its two spinoff short-story series, which I really enjoyed. There's such a beautiful message and promise of hope that runs through the narrative to the very end. Pair that with a lot of emphasis on friendships and family relationships and you've got a story I'm very likely to love. I'll probably post more thoughts later this month, so keep your eye out for that!
• I also finished rereading the Lord of the Rings trilogy this month with Return of the King! So that was fun. I have concluded in the process of rereading it that, of all the minor characters in LOTR (not counting The Silimarillion), Beregond and Bergil are the most underrated. (For those who forgot or don't know: Beregond is a guard of Minas Tirith who befriends Pippin; Bergil is Beregond's son.)
• Theoretically, this should be the bit where I reread The Silimarillion . . . but I'm still kinda intimidated by that. We'll see.
• And, yeah. Five Green Ember books, the Return of the King, and I'm done. (Well, I did reread some Fellowship of Fantasy short stories throughout the month when I wanted something short and contained before bed. But I don't count that.)

Watching!

• We did not watch any LOTR this month, but we were kind of too busy. I did watch quite a few other movies, though!
• We started out the month with An American Tail for Independence Day, which was . . . darker than I remembered. In all fairness, I hadn't watched it since I was . . . eight or nine, at the oldest. It sparked a lengthy conversation about movies that are theoretically made for kids but which would probably traumatize small children and what movies some of my friends were and weren't allowed to watch and why they weren't allowed to watch them and so on. It was a good movie, though!
• The next weekend, we re-watched The Music Man, which is always a favorite. I've said this before, but Harold Hill's character and arc is basically one of my favorite archetypes/tropes, and I will never get tired of it in any form.
• I did manage to mark another movie off my to-watch list, though, by finally watching The Emperor's New Groove (which I voted for when we were picking a Disney movie because it gets referenced SO MUCH and I wanted to understand the references). I actually enjoyed it a lot more than you woud expect, given that it's a movie very reliant on the humiliation of a central character and I suffer from intense secondhand embarassment. I think the fact that you aren't supposed to like Kuzco until a fair way through the movie helped. The story overall was rather different from what I expected, but it was fun.
• And, as per the usual, I'm still watching Critical Role. Slowly. I'm only partway through Episode 72, but, again, I've been busy. The Clay backstory was cool, though. Also, I think this is the episode where Stuff Happens With Fjord, but as of the writing of this post, I haven't quite gotten there yet. (By the time you read this, I probably will have watched it, and if I've watched it, I suspect I'll have Opinions.)

Life!

Almost everyone died in this game of Sentinels . . . but we still won!

• Storms and stars and satellites, was this a busy month or what? (Spoiler alert: it was a busy month.)
• 4th of July weekend was probably one of the two quietest weekends of the month. We didn't go see fireworks, but we got together with some Bible study friends for s'mores and mountain pies, which was fun, and my dad, sister, and I went to the shooting range.
• The following weekend, my grandpa came down to visit. He hasn't been down in . . . probably two years, honestly, though we've gone up to visit him at his house, so that was nice. That weekend also featured a chocolate raspberry mousse cake, which was so good. Utterly delicious.
• (I also ended up working Saturday morning that weekend, filling in for the usual slides-and-sound person at a funeral at the church where I work. It was a very nice funeral, and it was clear that the deceased was well-loved by many, many people. It did go kind of long, though, which was, y'know, fine other than the fact that I needed to get home and make rolls to go with dinner.)
• We had about a week of quiet after my grandpa left, and then our next visitor arrived: my college roommate! So that was SUPER fun. She stayed for just under a week, and we spent most of that time playing board games, and by "board games" I mostly mean Sentinels of the Multiverse. Her visit was also when I watched The Emperor's New Groove for the first time.
• Probably the highlight of her visit was Friday, when we got together with my sister's roommate (who lives in the area) for a full day of fun. We visited an escape room, which we solved with just ten minutes to spare. Then, after stops at the board game store and an ice cream parlor, we returned to my house . . . for more board games, obviously. My sister's roommate had brought some of her game collection to complement what we had, and she introduced us to a new game, The Crew, as well as some new heroes and hero alternates for Sentinels. Then we finished out the night with pizza, a cheese night (which, for the uninitiated, basically means everyone brought fancy-ish cheeses and we ate them with crackers and sparkling juice), and Mysterium (like Clue, but 500x better).
• In addition to all that, I've been going through my church's membership class so I'll be qualified to volunteer, lead a small group, and otherwise get connected as I choose. That's been interesting.
• My sister and I have also been continuing through Portal 2, and she was appropriately surprised by the twists in the storyline. I also gave Journey another try, restarting the game completely so I can try to figure out what I missed that got me stuck on the third stage. I've only replayed the first two stages, but now that I have a better idea what I'm looking for, I think I'm enjoying it more.
• And, of course, work continues. Not much to say about work other than it's been quiet and I continue to enjoy it.

August Plans

• My big projects for August are edits, formatting, and blog tour prep for Gilded in Ice. I'm starting to get back feedback from my beta readers, and I'm looking forward to polishing up the story and getting it ready to share with the rest of y'all. (I'm also a little nervous . . . but nerves always kick in around the editing stage.)
• My sister returns to college partway through the month, which means we need to make sure we finish up everything we wanted to do with her during the summer, including games and watching The Return of the King. That also means I'll have to get used to not having someone to chat with over dishes again.
• My D&D group should finish up this season/arc this month — I think we only have two, maybe three sessions left. We're halfway through the climax now, and . . . let's just say that the most intense part of that battle is still to come.
• On the reading front, I'm torn between the fact that I intended to read more classics and epic fantasy this year and the fact that I got four months of Kindle Unlimited for free and I want to make the most of them . . . which mostly means reading all the City Between books and miscellaneous other indie books that I haven't convinced myself to spend money on yet. We'll see which urge wins out.
• Yeah. I'm hoping August will be a quieter month than the last two. We'll see if that works out or not . . .

How was your July? Any exciting plans for August? Have you played any board games (or even video games) lately that you really enjoyed? Please tell me in the comments!
Thanks for reading!

Here we are, halfway through 2021, and you all know what that means! It's time to check in with my reading for the year! As promised, we're renaming this because, let's be real, "Book Freakout" is not accurate. From here on out, these posts will be the Mid-Year (or End-of-Year) Book CELEBRATIONS! Because what are they, really, but a space for me to recognize and rejoice in all the awesome stories I've enjoyed?

As always, we're going to start the party with some statistics and updates on my reading goals. Thus far, I've read 44 books and 15.5K pages this year, which puts me a bit ahead of schedule for completing my overall goal of reading 75 books this year. It also puts me behind what I had read around this time last year (by about 14 books and 4K pages), but I have, y'know, a job this year. On the upside, I've liked most of what I've read; my average rating is 4.2 stars. As for my more specific reading goals:

• Towards my goal of 12 books written or published before 1975, I have read . . . 1 book. Wow. That's even worse than I thought — I expected that The Last Unicorn, at least, would have fallen into the "older books" zone, but it was published in 1986. That means the only book I've read that was published before 1975 is The Two Towers. (On the upside, I'm currently rereading Return of the King, so I'm about to have two books for this goal!)
• I've read 4 books outside the speculative fiction genres . . . sort of, at least? Three (the Jenny Lawson memoirs) definitely count. One (Isle of Swords) is . . . I think technically historical adventure fiction? But I can't remember for sure if there's any elements that would edge it over into historical fantasy.
• As for my goal of 1 epic-length Tolkien or Jordan novel every 2 months, I've read . . . again, one book. I briefly misremembered this goal as "one epic-length fantasy every 2 months," and if that were the case, I'd be doing great with my Sanderson reread. But nope. I even specifically said "non-Sanderson" in my original version of the goal.
• Finally, I have not been keeping up at all with my goal of tracking my reads in more detail. I meant to make a spreadsheet, and then I just . . . forgot. I went back and made a spreadsheet this past week of my reads thus far this year, though, so we'll try to do it for July and see how it goes. (Technically, my goal was only to do it for one month, so I haven't failed yet!)

And now, with those statistics out of the way, let's get on with the celebration proper!

2021 Mid-Year Book Celebration!

1. Best book you've read so far in 2021:

It's a tie, but not between the books you're thinking it will be.

Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman

The Werewolf of Whitechapel by Suzannah Rowntree

There is absolutely no way I can pick between these two. They're both magnificent urban fantasy adventures — one modern-ish, one historical. Neverwhere is probably one of the best showcases of Gaiman's magical writing style I've encountered, and it has mythical and fairy-tale vibes that can't be beat. On the other hand, The Werewolf of Whitechapel is a fantasy-mystery with a storytelling voice I just love and a heroine I couldn't dislike if I tried. Not that I'd want to try.

2. Best sequel you've read so far in 2021:

And here are the books you thought would be the answer to question one — another tie between two amazing books —

Rhythm of War by Brandon Sanderson

Return of the Thief by Megan Whalen Turner

Again, I can't choose between these. Rhythm was epic and explosive and heavy — literally and figuratively. Like Words of Radiance, it had some of the deepest darkness and most brilliant triumphs in the series to date. But Return was all I could've wanted from the conclusion to one of my favorite series — and then some.

3. New release you haven't read yet but want to:

Literally almost anything from my last two new-releases posts, ha! I've been mood reading a lot, and I've been playing catch-up since, I don't know, probably since 2015 to be honest.

The Anthropocene Reviewed by John Green

The Blacktongue Thief by Christopher Buehlman

Six Crimson Cranes by Elizabeth Lim

4. Most anticipated release for the second half of the year:

Mine.

But also . . .

Vespertine by Margaret Rogerson

Margaret Rogerson is one of my favorite authors, and the blurb for her next book reminds me of Abhorsen, which I also love, and I am SO PSYCHED. (It's also going to be a nomance! Which is FABULOUS.) I may or may not have joined the OwlCrate mailing list solely so I could order the special signed edition. I have no regrets.

5. Biggest disappointment:

The Unicorn Anthology

I don't DNF books very often, but this anthology just made me sad and angry, and it was full of stories by people who really wanted to be writing Literary Fiction but were, for some reason, writing fantasy — and so, to spite the fantasy crowd, they filled their stories with the same sort of misery that permeates the worst of literary fiction.

As for books I actually finished, The Last Unicorn probably takes the spot. I'm glad I read it once, but I really do not want to repeat the experience.

6. Biggest surprise:

Rule of Wolves by Leigh Bardugo

I read this book because I heard it had Kaz Brekker in it. I didn't even enjoy the Kaz Brekker bit that much. But the rest of it, I enjoyed far more than I expected based on the previous book. Less angst, more clever, desperate people being clever.

7. Favorite new-to-you author:

S.D. Smith, author of the Green Ember series

Other than Redwall, I generally haven't been one for the fantasy subgenre I like to refer to as "small creatures with swords." (That might be its actual name? I don't know.) But this series kept popping up on my radar, and I knew the author was associated with Andrew Peterson, so I figured I would give it a try . . . and storms, did I make the right choice.

8. Newest fictional ship:

• This isn't new, but my appreciation for Gen/Irene, Helen/Sophos, and Adolin/Shallan has been renewed and lifted to greater levels than ever. Relationship goals, all of them. Some of them shouldn't be relationship goals, maybe. (Looking at you, Gen/Irene.) But they are anyway, and they're beautiful.
• In terms of new ships, Lois and Chaiman are the sweetest and I shipped them before I was even certain there was any hope in shipping them.
• Sharp/Short from the Miss Sharp's Monsters series also gets a shoutout. They're an excellent match.

Yeah. There's not a lot to mention here. Most of the new books I've read haven't been romance-heavy, and I like it that way. (Also, I reread a lot this year.)

9. Newest favorite character:

Again, this year has had a lot of rereading, so I've spent a fair amount of time just renewing my appreciation for old favorite characters. That said, there are a few new faces on that list . . .

• Miss Sharp (Miss Sharp's Monsters) is whip-smart, stubbornly protective, and brave and loyal to a fault — not to mention quite witty. She's the best part of the series that bears her name — though I love many of her companions, allies, and sometimes enemies as well, particularly May, Inspector Short, and Grand Duke Vasily.
• The Marquis (Neverwhere) is a magnificent character, catlike in all the ways that matter most. Any scene he happens to be in is a good one, and the short story he had all to himself was just as good as the full novel I met him in.
• And from the Green Ember books, we have Helmer (grumpy, but heroic; I initially liked him out of spite for another character and then was pleased when my choice proved well-made), Picket (despite some initial frustrations and misgivings), Smalls (SMALLS!), and probably Weezie as well — I haven't known her quite long enough to be certain, but I very much like her in the half a book I can go off of.

10. A book that made you cry:

Rhythm of War didn't actually make me cry, but it did cause other distressed noises more than a few times, so I'd say that counts.

11. A book that made you happy:

Can I say The Werewolf of Whitechapel again? No? I have to talk about something else? Fine.

The Language of Thorns by Leigh Bardugo was a very cool collection of in-world myths, fairy tales, and legends. I very much enjoyed it, dark though it was at times. Part of me wants to try to do something similar for some of my worlds, but we'll see.

12. Favorite book to film adaptation you've seen this year:

Fellowship of the Ring. Yes, it's a rewatch. I'm counting it because otherwise I have nothing to count.

13. Favorite post you've done so far this year:

I've been blogging a little less this year, but I still have a few posts that I really enjoyed writing and whose end result I'm pleased with.

• "Old Years' Memories; New Years' Visions" — My annual New Year's short story chronicling the adventures of Carrie and Tamison! This one may be my favorite in the series so far, in no small part due to how many references I got to make to all the books I've written and am going to write.
• Giving Fanfic Some Credit — I'd been thinking about writing this post for at least a year before I finally wrote it, and I really enjoyed being able to celebrate fanfiction, which is a large part of what's gotten me into more than one fandom.
• Some Thoughts on Spoilers — I have strong-ish opinions about spoilers, and they run in the opposite direction to everyone else's strong opinions. Or so it seems sometimes.

14. Most beautiful book you've bought so far this year:

Behold: Spindle. It's beautiful, and it's mine, and I got so excited when I found it.

15. What books do you need to read by the end of the year?

Heh. All of them. (But I do have four months free of Kindle Unlimited, and I want to make the most of it, so . . . probably allllllll the indie fantasy/spec fic that I've been holding off on because I don't like buying ebooks unless I know they'll be good.)

What about you? What were your favorite reads of the year? Biggest surprises (for good or ill)? Are you caught up on 2021 releases, or are you just as behind as I am? And, if you're a fellow Margaret Rogerson fan, how excited are you for Vespertine? Please tell me in the comments!
Thanks for reading!

June 2021 Doings!

 Hey'a, friends! June and my blogging hiatus are both at an end, so here I am with the month's Doings! I'll have some other update-y posts for you later in the month (specifically, my mid-year reading roundups next week and a general writing update towards the end of July), but those are later. Let's get on with the Doings!

Writing!

• The second draft of Gilded in Ice, the sequel to The Midnight Show, is finished! Huzzah! This took much longer than anticipated, but that's probably more due to poor estimating on my part than it is due to the book itself. I mean, it's kind of due to the book. But it's mostly on me.
• Almost as exciting: Gilded in Ice also has a blurb, tagline, and cover! The cover will be revealed at a later date (though you get a sneak peak above), but the blurb and tagline are out there on the interwebs in their finished form, if you care to seek for them.
• I didn't do very much D&D writing this month, but my group did get to play IN PERSON for the first time in almost a year and a half! It was so nice to actually play without screens to separate us. Everyone was much more engaged, even though the session was mostly combat (which usually is when people are most likely to get distracted). I mean, the fact that we got to have a physical map (which is a lot easier to see and interact with) and candies for the baddies probably helps a lot with that. But it's also just a lot easier and more fun to talk and interact when you're face-to-face.

Reading!

• Apparently this has been a really long month, because I genuinely thought some of my June reads were from back in May.
• Anyway. This was another month in which my reading was kind of all over the place. The best book of the month was probably The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep, which was recommended to me by a friend with excellent taste in books. It's urban fantasy about a man who can bring characters and things and places out of books, and there's a lot of celebration of both brotherhood and classic literature, and it's just a very good story. A bit slow in the middle, but still very good.
• I continued reading the Green Ember books; I got through book 2, two of the novellas, and most of book 3 in June, and at the moment I'm either finishing or just finished with book 3 (not pictured). I'm very much enjoying the series, and I think it's especially good for this present moment. One of the themes of the story seems to be hope in the midst of heartache, and it's just a good reminder that nothing evil endures.
• (On a related note, I kind of want to make art of a particular refrain from this series — "It will not be so in the Mended Wood" — and of the "it will shine out the brighter" LOTR quote and of a few other similar quotes. I am bad at text-based art, so we'll see if it happens.)
• On the other side of the spectrum, Rule of Wolves and Dirk Gently were both better than I expected. I read Rule of Wolves because I heard Kaz and the Crows were in it, and . . . they were, but honestly, their part wasn't even in my top five for favorite parts of the book. The story as a whole has moved away from angst and back towards clever people being clever and amazing, which I appreciate. And then Dirk Gently I picked up on a whim, despite the fact that the only other thing I've read by Douglas Adams, I dislike. But this one was enjoyable! And interesting! And funny without being depressing! So I count that as a win.
• Rounding out the month are the Critical Role Mighty Nein art book — stealth-read in ebook form at work on a slow afternoon — and a reread of The Whispering Skull, the second Lockwood and Co book. Both were quite enjoyable. The art book had an excellent selection of pieces and some nice "background info" on the world and characters featured. And I liked The Whispering Skull better than I remembered.

Watching!

• Ticking another movie off my list of things-I-should've-watched-years-ago-and-didn't, my family watched National Treasure towards the start of the month. Don't judge me, but I think I liked it better than Indiana Jones. I love a good heist or a good treasure hunt much more than a standard action-adventure, and National Treasure has both. So, yeah. Definitely my cup of tea. Plus it was just a generally fun movie.
• My family also continued rewatching the Lord of the Ring Extended Editions with The Two Towers. When I reread the book a month or so ago, I was surprised by how much more I enjoyed it than I remembered . . . so it's kind of sad that the movie had the opposite effect. The changes that I'm most upset about (how Peter Jackson absolutely ruined Faramir's character and the overemphasis and over-angsting of Aragorn and Arwen's romance) are most prominent in this movie, plus . . . look, I know that my favorite quotes in both the book and movie version of The Lord of the Rings come from Frodo and Sam's part of this book, but other than that, I really do not enjoy Frodo and Sam's journey to Mordor, and it's worse on the screen. On the page, I can read a little faster; on the screen, I'm limited by the pace the director set. So, yeah. If I have to pick one LOTR movie to watch, it would be Fellowship every time.
• And, of course, watching Critical Role continues. I tried the first episode of Exandria Unlimited and got through to the break, but to be honest, I was not enough of a fan to keep going, and I'm definitely not into it enough to watch it live. (Or, live-ish.) It's nothing against the DM or the players; I can tell they were having a great time, and the DM seems pretty fun. But the story they were telling didn't grab me, and without any kind of prior attachment to the characters, I wasn't super inclined to keep going. (I also learned that I do not like watching stuff on Twitch because the chat is super distracting. So that's another point not in its favor. I'll deal with it when the real Campaign 3 rolls around, but not for this.) Instead, I'm going to keep going with Campaign 2. I'm currently on Episode 70, and . . . yeah. It's been heavy, and it's a dark part of the story, but I look forward to what's to come.

Life!

 Despite all my adventures this month, I don't have a single representative picture that doesn't include people who might not want their faces on the internet. Enjoy this picture of my latest sourdough loaf instead.

• Well, this was a busy month, let me tell you!
• The first half of the month was dominated by writing like mad, trying to get my book done . . . and also by my mom fracturing her thumb while working outside Memorial Day weekend. Which is, y'know, non-ideal. And painful for her. And stressful for everyone. And which also meant that my sister and I had to take responsibility for more of the cooking and some of the other around-the-house tasks for a while. (My sister ended up with more of that work than I did, by virtue of the fact that she's home most of the day and I'm not. And I very much appreciate her doing it.) And by the time we got past that, we had come to the point of . . .
• The Ohio adventure! One of my hall friends from college was getting married, which basically meant a mini-reunion of most of the friend group . . . and an eight-hour drive each way. (The drive went fine. My sister copiloted/helped drive half of each side of the trip, and aside from a massive rainstorm while we were in the mountains on the last leg of the trip, everything went smoothly.) And then I had a VERY busy weekend in Ohio making sure I got to do all the things with all the people.
• Thursday evening through Friday afternoon were reasonably chill — I hung out with my roommate (whose house I was staying at), we played Sentinels of the Multiverse, and I wrote while she was at work. Then, Friday evening, the day before the wedding, I drove down to visit a couple of friends who wouldn't be at the weekend's main event. It was so nice to get to enjoy a meal with them again (we were lunch buddies in college, among other connections), and then they introduced me to the board game Scythe, which I honestly enjoyed much more than I expected. I'd heard it was long and a bit complex, and long it was (I stayed much later than I intended, though the thunderstorm that rolled in right as we sat down to dinner also contributed), but it wasn't any more complex than Sentinels. But yeah. There was a lot of good conversation and good fun, and I've missed them a lot.
• Then we get to Saturday! Which was . . . a lot. There was the wedding, obviously, which was lovely. One thing that stood out to me was that it was a lot more sociable than many of the weddings I've attended in the last couple years. Specifically, the bride and groom and the wedding party were able to spend much more time with the guests than at many other weddings, and it was nice to get to spend time with the people I came to see and celebrate.
• After the wedding, the hall group returned to my roommate's home with the intention of continuing celebrations (the "afterparty," if you will), but what actually happened was that everyone crashed until someone said they were hungry and we should eat dinner. But it was nice to have the whole group together again. Conversations were had, photos were taken, and many hugs were given. Many, many hugs.
• And after that was the after-after-party, aka D&D. Which was, as already mentioned, magnificently fun even though we were all exhausted. And even though some of the players had really bad luck with saving throws. And the encounter turned out harder than I expected. It's ok.
• That brings us to the back half of the month, which was taken up by trying to recover my energy after the trip (still haven't fully succeeded, to be honest) and by some workplace stress in the form of one of the staff members leaving unexpectedly. I was honestly one of the people least affected by the departure, but it was still a bit stressful for everyone.
• Oh, and in the midst of all this, my sister and I finished Portal and moved on to Portal 2! (Again, she's playing for the first time, while I'm playing for the third time.) It's still fun, though I do get occasionally frustrated by the fact that things I think should be obvious even on your first playthrough aren't obvious to her. In all fairness, I spent much more time than she did playing computer and video games and watching others play those types of games, so I'm more familiar with the conventions than she is. We're both generally enjoying it, though.
• I also gave Journey (that one video game with the sand and the robed people and all that) a try earlier this week. I'm not entirely sold on it, and I think I missed something in the third level, and possibly several of the other levels, because right now I'm stuck. We'll see if I go back to it or if I just move on to other games.

July Plans

• So, I'm just going to say one thing up front: I am not doing Camp NaNoWriMo this month. I tried back in April and kind of flopped, and I just finished a writing project and need to take a break before I pick up something else big. I don't know how long of a break it needs to be either, just that it needs to be.
• What will I be working on? I'll be doing some D&D writing (which is still writing, but is different enough that it should give my brain a break.) I'll be working on formatting for Gilded (as much as I can without the finished manuscript). I'll be giving myself space to play with other stories and ideas and projects as they come to me. And I'll also be blogging, obviously. My June hiatus was nice, but I don't want to go off-schedule too long.
• That said, the other reason I'm taking July off from planned writing is that it's going to be another busy month in terms of events and social stuff. There's Independence Day, obviously (though that'll be small, since the people we normally watch fireworks with are out of town), and we're having guests twice during the month. (My college roommate is coming to visit, and I am VERY excited.) Plus, I'm thinking of starting a board-games-and-Bible-study group through my church, so I'll need some time to figure out what that looks like and how that works.
• And, of course, I plan to spend a lot of time during the month enjoying good stories in many forms: books (I need to finish my LOTR reread and my Green Ember series read, and I'm thinking of rereading the Knight and Rogue books, or maybe the City Watch thread of Discworld books), movies and shows (I still need to introduce my sister to Firefly, and video games (the Portal 2 playthrough will continue, plus I want to hit some of the other games I've bought on Steam and not gotten around to). All in all, I have a lot to look forward to.

How was your June? Any exciting plans for July? [question] Please tell me in the comments!
Thanks for reading!

May 2021 Doings

Hello, y'all! It's the end of May, or just about — technically, we have a few days left in the month, but I'm posting Doings now for reasons that will be clear at the end of this post. I anticipate a quiet Memorial Day weekend, so it should be fine. Let's get going!

Writing!

• Here's the big news: the Midnight Show sequel has a title! After some deliberation (and title testing on IG), I settled on Gilded in Ice. This will be the second time I've written and released a book that has a wintery title despite being set primarily in spring or summer . . . but this one, at least, does involve quite a bit of coldness. (I'll just have to release some wintery books with warm or summery titles to balance it out. Or, you know, I could stop doing this sort of thing altogether, but where's the fun in that?)
• The actual writing of the book is coming along slowly but steadily. I'm on Chapter 30 or 31 at this point (depending on when you read this post — if I'm lucky or if you're reading this really late, I might be on 32), and I sorted out the rest of the timeline this past week.
• ("Wait, Sarah," you say, "you're editing this, aren't you? Shouldn't the timeline have been figured out months ago?" I've rearranged and cut so many scenes in this book, the original timeline ran for the hills long ago. And I've been working the rewritten timeline out in chunks of five to ten chapters at a time.)
• Anyway. As I was saying, I'm on chapter 30 or 31, and I plan for about 40 chapters total. So it would be feasible for me to finish the rewrite this coming month, provided I'm able to focus.

Reading!

• As you can probably see, this month's reading was a somewhat eclectic mix. I'm not sure if it's actually more eclectic than my average reading month or if I'm just in a mood while I'm writing this, but there was a lot of variety.
• I'm finally back to rereading The Lord of the Rings, as you can see. I'd been procrastinating on The Two Towers because, while I quite enjoy the first half of the book, Frodo and Sam's journey from the Great River to Mordor is one of my least favorite parts of the trilogy. (Granted, it does have one of my favorite LOTR quotes and one of my favorite characters in it, so that helps. But it's still . . . y'know.) But I got some extra motivation in the form of needing to refresh my memory of the book's events, and I'm glad I finally got back to it.
• I had two read-for-review books this month: Bryan Davis's Invading Hell and Suzannah Rowntree's A Vampire in Bavaria. Both were excellent, and Invading Hell was a pleasant surprise — I was worried that it, like the first book, would end up amplifying my stress rather than providing an escape. However, it ended up having much more of a classic Davis book vibe than I expected, almost reminding me of some of the Oracles of Fire novels. I suspect it'll end up being my favorite in the trilogy.
• And, of course, I loved A Vampire in Bavaria. This time, I was ready for more action and less mystery (so I didn't experience that same twinge of missed expectations I did in Anarchist), and the story itself was absolutely thrilling. I made the mistake of picking it up after ten in the evening, thinking I could read a few chapters and then set it down again like I usually would — and then it was 11:30, and I was on Chapter 11, so I decided I'd read one more chapter so I could end on a good number — and then I didn't end until the book did. Oops.
• And the last exciting read of the month was The Green Ember, which has been quietly blinking out at the edge of my radar for quite a while — the author is part of the Rabbit Room, I think, or is otherwise associated with Andrew Peterson — but which was pushed to much higher priority by the fact that a new friend of mine kept posting fanart for it, and I got curious. So I read it and quite enjoyed it, even if I did occasionally have to stop and question the author's character-naming choices. (There's a rabbit named Kyle, and he has roughly the personality you'd expect from a human by that name. He confuses me on many, many levels. He's not a main character, thankfully.) 
• Names aside, though, it's a good story, and the main characters are a very satisfying balance of reasonably competent but still inexperienced, and, yeah, I guessed what Smalls's deal was in the first chapter he was onscreen, but I'm ok with that. And I definitely requested the rest of the series from the library when I was about 60 pages out from the end of the first book.
• And a quick mention of my other reads this month: The Language of Thorns was a really cool anthology of in-world folktales from the Grishaverse, and now I kinda feel like I should do a better job thinking through my own worlds' folklore. Met by Midnight was a reasonably interesting twist on Cinderella and a nice distraction on the random day when my office lost internet access all day, but it's far from my favorite retelling. And my reread of Elantris was a nice next step in my Cosmere reread.

Watching!

• Pretty much the most noteworthy bit of the month on this front was probably re-watching the Fellowship of the Ring (extended edition, naturally) with my family towards the beginning of the month. Though — and I kind of feel like a horrible person for this — I honestly wasn't excited about watching it? It wasn't even my suggestion; my dad is the one who's been suggesting LOTR any time we're talking about watching a movie. And I kept putting it off with the excuse that my sister would be disappointed if we watched them without her — until now, obviously, because my sister was here and did want to watch the movie.
• I don't even know why I wasn't more enthusiastic about the idea. I should've been enthusiastic. I've repeatedly stated that The Lord of the Rings trilogy is my favorite movie/movie series, and I still hold to that statement. But when it came up in discussion, I just . . . wasn't excited. I don't know. Maybe I was remembering all my frustrations with the movie more keenly than the things I love about it. Maybe I was intimidated by the probability that if we started watching the trilogy, even if we watched each movie in halves (which is what we're doing), I was committing to the equivalent of two movies a weekend for at least three weeks. Or maybe it was just one of those scenarios where the weight of the excitement and hype I thought I was supposed to feel started pressing so hard that it turned into dread instead. That's happened, sometimes. It's a primary reason why I sometimes take ages upon ages to read a book I've, up to that point, been really excited for. I don't know.
• Anyway. The point is, we watched Fellowship, and I certainly enjoyed it, even if I wasn't excited about it. I was less frustrated with Frodo's tendency to stare dramatically than I remembered being, which was a plus. And I'd forgotten how much of the dialogue actually is pulled straight from the book.
• On the downside, I have . . . well, I didn't actually read The Silmarillion, but I read a lot about the events of The Silmarillion, and now I'm about 300% more annoyed at the absence of Glorfindel than I was back when I just thought he was a cool character. Like, for conservation of detail, I understand the switch, but . . . bleh. I also think that Tolkien had the right idea in the books, keeping Arwen and Aragorn's romance largely "off-screen" and showing it mostly through other methods, thereby preserving the more . . . mythic, I guess, element of it. (Feel free to take that opinion with as much salt as you like, though. I tend to not be enthusiastic about on-screen romances in general, and that, along with characters' communication skills, tends to be the first thing critique in any film.)
• (Also, unpopular opinion, but leaving out Tom Bombadil was 100% the right choice. Younger me may have said otherwise. Younger me also was trying to shape a large portion of her identity around being a "hardcore" Tolkien fan. Tom Bombadil and the Old Forest are great in the books for worldbuilding, theme, and tension purposes. But in the movie, they truly aren't necessary.)
• Outside of Fellowship, I've pretty much just been watching — you guessed it! — more Critical Role. I just finished Episode 66 the other night, and . . . to be honest, I'm ready to move on from Xhorhas, just like I was ready to move on from Fjord's pirate arc a few months ago. Mostly, I'm tired of the Mighty Nein's attitude. But we seem to be moving in a cool (though creepy) direction with the end of the last episode, so I'm excited for that!
• Also, I keep hearing that Campaign 2 is probably going to wrap up soon, which is kind of exciting for me in that it means Campaign 3 will be right around the corner (albeit after a hiatus, probably). And that means I'll have the option to at least start the episodes when they're live as opposed to, y'know, two years after they happen. It'll mean splitting my attention between two campaigns, but I can live with that, especially since there'll no longer be any pressure to "catch up."

Life!

• We saw an owl! In our YARD! Not only that, in a tree right outside the office window! It was very exciting.
• In other news, my sister's back! And that's made me happy. It's nice to have someone around who's a little closer to my own age (and who shares most of my interests). We've played a few rounds of Sentinels, and I introduced her to Portal. (I also started replaying Portal, but I'm doing it in tandem with her — so, we do the same rooms at the same time, so I can more effectively provide hints and help when she needs it and so I have the fun of playing it. The added benefit is that, because we're only playing when we can play together, it doesn't become a temptation for either of us to spend too much time on.)
• Mother's Day was pretty chill as a holiday. We played some Yahtzee and watched the second half of The Fellowship of the Ring, my sister and I made food, and . . . that's pretty much it. Unless I'm forgetting something. Which is always possible.
• Probably the most exciting thing that happened this month was a visit to a historic mansion and its gardens/grounds (mostly the gardens/grounds because we weren't allowed in the mansion) courtesy of my dad's photo club's lack of a year-end party. (As in, they didn't have a year-end party, so they spent the money on admission for this instead). We had a nice time walking around and taking pictures, and I convinced my sister to dress up a bit so I could do some portrait photography, which was fun. The pictures mostly seem to have turned out reasonably well, though I do apparently suffer from an inability to hold the camera straight half the time. Oh well. That's what the crop tool is for.
• Work continues to be, well, business as usual. Things are quieting down now, since Easter (and Pentecost) is past and less happens in the summer. Well, that's not quite true. Stuff still happens . . . it's just not as intense as Easter week or the newsletter. Or figuring out the livestreaming system. (This is a good thing in that it means I'm less stressed about my actual work. It's not a great thing in that it gives me more time to get frustrated with people .  . . well, mostly one person who has a habit of asking me to update, design, or post things and then not giving me all the information I need, even when I ask multiple times. Given that this is the only significant job-based frustration I have on a regular basis, I am absolutely not complaining. I'm still annoyed, though.)
• (Also, I realized that this is basically just another variation on the same problem that caused me 99% of my stress my junior year of college, and I'm just like . . . gah. I can't even solve this one by doing what needs to be done for the person who didn't do it because, again, I'm lacking fundamental information and resources. Is this going to be my entire life? Because it's starting to feel like this is going to be my entire life.)
• On the baking front, I made sourdough bagels (which turned out much better than the non-sourdough ones I made two months ago) and a chocolate cake (because I have basically no experience with cake-making, and I thought I should fix that.)
• And we'll wrap this up with a D&D update! We only met a couple times this month, thanks to people having to deal with stuff like, y'know, finals and travel and work. Sadly, we lost one of our players, at least temporarily. We hope he'll be able to come back once his job situation is sorted out, but for now, we're operating as if he won't be returning. And then we had our first PC death (not counting the PC who turned on the party ages ago) the same session. He got better (because guess who has Revivify now? me, that's who), but it was still intense.

June Plans

• You know how I normally take a blogging hiatus in April because it's Camp NaNoWriMo and finals and all that jazz? And you know how I didn't take a hiatus in April this year because I'd been going at a Camp NaNo pace all year already and I didn't have finals? Yeah. Turns out that hiatus was important.
• So, yes. I'll be taking a blogging hiatus in June. I'll still be reading other people's blogs and hanging out on Facebook and Instagram, and I'll probably try to put up my Summer 2021 reads post sometime before summer starts. But I won't be posting other than that until July (or at least until June Doings).
• What will I be doing instead? Most significantly, I intend to have the second draft of Gilded in Ice finished and ready for other people to read and return comments on by the end of the month. This is way later than I wanted it to be done, but it is what it is, and I'm planning on a later release, so I should still have time enough.
• I also have a wedding to attend in June, which I'm excited for. It'll be a chance to see a lot of my close friends who I haven't seen in person in a year or more, so that makes up for all the driving I'll have to do to get to it.
• And I also think that the current D&D arc I'm running will probably wrap up this month! Assuming we actually manage to meet more than twice in the whole month, that is. After we finish the arc, we'll probably take a break from playing for a bit so I can write what happens next. One thing I'm certain of: while this was fun, I'm going to try to avoid planning such lengthy modules in the future.

How was your May? Any exciting plans for June? Or for the summer in general? And do you ever have the problem of "I should be excited for this because I love it, but I'm not actually excited?" Please tell me in the comments!
Thanks for reading!