Ah Sweet November
I'm not sure where November went. It kind of passed by in a blur that was a mixture of activity and restfulness. Since I happen to have a few minutes, I thought I'd do an "Ishness" post to celebrate the ending of the month and in an attempt to jump-start myself back into posting on a regular basis. Ishness is a monthly meme begun by Deborah over at The Road of a Writer.
HIGHLIGHTSGetting to hold the physical copy of Yorien's Hand!My birthday. I got a new vacuum cleaner!!! And I am now apparently officially "old" because I got really ridiculously excited about the fact that my big birthday present this year was a vacuum cleaner. Sigh. Well, your priorities change when you have your own home and three little munchkins who like to trail crumbs all over the place, despite your best attempts to keep all food stuffs in the kitchen/dining area.I also got 9 new books for my birthday, and I am so excited about them! Some I have read before, some I haven't.Getting to be part of the Indie Christian author sale that is ending today. That was such a fun experience and I was honored to get to be part of it. I gave away over 600 free copies of King's Warrior and Second Son combined, and sold 2 paperbacks. My titles were also put in front of countless new potential readers, so I consider all of that a marketing win!Thanksgiving and visitors! My husband's parents came up to visit us for Thanksgiving and spent the weekend with us! It was so nice to have them here and we are sad to see them leave tomorrow.Hearing a few really sweet and enthusiastic remarks back from my beta readers for Yorien's Hand already, which just always totally makes my day.A low-point in the month... the Cubs did NOT go to the World Series... and I am currently not speaking to them again until April.WRITINGWorking my way through the final polishing edit of Yorien's Hand. I'm through chapter 6, so not very far yet, but it's going well. Making those pages bleed with my red pen (yes, it is a red pen... I'm still an English teacher at heart).Started batting around a tentative idea for a new story with my husband... just a setting and a premise and the beginnings of a main character so far... this one is probably years from even getting started, as I have quite a lot of other writing projects in the queue in front of this one, but it's fun to dream up new ideas!Reworked and submitted a short story to the Neoverse short story contest. The winners are announced on January 15th and I have absolutely zero confidence that my story will be among the winners, but it was free and fun, so why not?READINGI finished J.L. Mbewe's Secrets Kept and really enjoyed it. I'll write up a real review later. I have quite a lot of reviews to write waiting in the wings... but I never seem to acquire the necessary motivation to actually write them. I'm going to try to be better about that in 2016. Reviews are important, and as an author, I should do a better job supporting my fellow authors in this way.I am nearly finished with Golden Daughter by Anne Elisabeth Stengl and EEEEE!!!! I love it so much!WATCHINGLet's see. In November we watched Season 5 of Blue Bloods. Pretty good season, a few episodes I didn't like at all... but not too bad.Finished the final half season of White Collar and LOVED it! They did a great job wrapping everything up in a very satisfying way. Neal and Peter. I am going to miss them. Sigh.We started season 2 of Black List, but that's a hard one to watch sometimes. The whole rooting for an anti-hero thing is hard for me. It's not a show I can binge watch. It's more of a "episode per week" sort of show. Better in small doses. Interesting premise and good characters and story... just dark.Gotham is.... meh. We haven't watched it lately, because other things have taken precedence. I still just can't quite get excited about Gotham with out Batman. Probably not going to be continuing that one.We went to see The Martian with my sister at the beginning of the month and that was definitely the best movie I've seen in a long time! Absolutely loved it! Definitely recommend it. (Disclaimer: there is quite a bit of swearing, including the F-word a few times, which is always disappointing and tends to ruin a movie for me... and I had no need to see Matt Damon's nakey bottom... but other than that, the movie is very good and I'll probably write up a review of that one soon, too)Also went to see Spectre (the newest James Bond movie) last night and.... I just gotta be honest, I really don't love James Bond. I also don't think Daniel Craig is a very good actor... more on that later.Happy Thanksgiving, Charlie Brown and the cartoon How the Grinch Stole Christmas have been our holiday movies so far this year, and that has been fun!!! I love Christmas movies!DECEMBER PLANSFinish polishing Yorien's Hand and get the final proof copy!!!! Squeal!Read lots of new books!Hopefully getting to experience REAL snow with my kiddos. Daily activities of homeschool and playing outside and celebrating Advent with our annual Jesse Tree activities and readings.Christmas!!! What about you, dear Reader? How was your November? Did anyone participate in Nano? Did you Nano-ers hit your writing goals? Any big Christmas plans? Read any spectacular books lately?