Nightstands and Birthdays and Mayhem, Oh My!

I realized somewhere around Friday of last week that I totally forgot about Nightstand Books. What can I say, it's been a crazy month. Instead of doing a traditional Nightstand post, I'm just going to do a big mayhem-ishness post for February, instead. 

Ishness is a monthly meme created by Deborah over at Road of a Writer.

WritingPretty much all I wrote in February was blog posts. But it was super fun, and I churned out a ton of posts on topics that have been percolating in the back of my brain for many moons. However, the huge exciting thing about the Fantasy February theme was how many of you seemed to enjoy the daily dose of fantasy-fun. Thank you for stopping by and reading, and for all the lovely comments, and just for in general being a wonderful group of readers. I love you all. February saw me surpass my highest number of page views in a month ever, and that was super encouraging. To all my new readers: I bid thee welcome!ReadingI read Do You Take This Quest and My Kingdom for a Quest by Kendra E. Ardnek and enjoyed both immensely. I also read Loving the Little Years by Rachel Jankovic. I started reading Dragon's Curse by H.L. Burke and re-reading The Thief by Megan Whalen Turner, but haven't finished either of those yet. I had grand plans of re-reading the first three books of the Queen's Thief series, but... well, yeah. I often tend to be a bit overambitious with my reading plans/goals. On my nightstand for March are the two books I'm currently reading and I still want to re-read the first two books in DJ Edwardson's Chronotrace Sequence so I can read the final book in the trilogy. I'm alpha reading a story for a dear friend (and it is SOOOO good!) and beta-reading another story, and possibly beta-reading another book later this month, depending on how editing goes for the author working on that one... so I'm keeping my reading goals... um... normal, I guess.WatchingHaven't watched much of note lately. We re-watched the Martian when it came out on DVD, love that movie. I plan to review it soon. Other than that, we've mostly been watching a super nerdy web-series...Life-ingNathalie had her fourth birthday last week, so that was super fun. Can't believe she's so big already! We're searching for a church home here in Wisconsin... for those of you who pray, any prayers on that front would be greatly appreciated. Trying to find a place where we "fit" and can make friends is proving a bit more difficult than I would have imagined it to be.Looking Forward To-ingBrittany Jean's next album is releasing this Friday! I'm hoping to have something fun on the blog to celebrate! This album is called "Leavin' Home" and I'll tell you more about it later, but I am SO EXCITED about it!!!! For more information, you can visit her new WEBSITE. I'm hoping to have her over for some sort of fun Q&A about her newest album, so keep an eye out for that.Also, there are a couple of books coming out this spring that I'm very much looking forward to. SO much exciting!March PlansEditing! Minstrel's Call has been neglected for too long, and I need to get cracking on it. Hopefully I will have a lovely amount of progress to report in the next Ishness post. I have gotten back into it a bit, though I had a frustrating moment the other day when I realized I'd been editing for over an hour on the wrong draft... sigh.Beta reading - as I said, I have a couple of authors who have entrusted me with the beta-drafts of their books this month and I'm excited about reading them! I don't do very much beta reading at all, so it should tell you something about how excited I am about these authors that I'm doing this.Watching for Spring. Yep, this Winter-Lovin' girl who's been aching for chilly temps and snow is actually excited about Spring this year! It's so so so nice to be excited for Spring, rather than annoyed that it showed up without giving Winter a chance. As I type this, it is snowing again, and I am loving every minute of it, so don't take this as a sign that I've gone mad or anything... I just am super happy about having all four season again... skewed a bit towards the colder months instead of the warmer ones. (I'm told summers here are simply gorgeous, so that's exciting to look forward to, as well).How about you, dear Reader? How was your February? What are your plans for March? I'd love to hear all about either in the comments!Also, the link-up for Fantasy February is open until March 15, so if you wanted to get a post written and didn't manage to, there's still time! I'll be posting with all the links on the 16th so that they're more visible and we can extend the Fantasy enjoyment even further. Also, DJ and I have a fun blog thing coming up in May to run through the summer... easy to participate - very low-key, but if any of you bloggers are interested in helping host a sort of "Fantasy Oscars" let me know! (And don't be surprised if I contact some of you directly about it once we have the details ironed out).