Hey all, Sam here.
Do you know how difficult it was to choose which book was going to be the featured image for this post? There were like three books I wanted to choose, but unless I edited them to be all together in one image, I had to narrow it down to just one.
Anyway, I had originally planned and intended on having this post go live on May 1st, but on April 28th we learned that David’s grandpa had passed away, and on the 29th we were told that the funeral would be in Ohio on May 2nd…so we had to make some calls and get things sorted at work, and then rush to get ourselves ready to drive the eight hours (each way) so we could be at the funeral.
Needless to say, my focus was not on writing up the final couple paragraphs on this post (or the one I had planned for May 3rd). This wrap-up is going live today, and since the May 3rd post was a Weekend Writer post, it will be up this weekend. But I’m also spending some more time over the next couple of days getting a few more posts finished and/or written, so hopefully there’s much more to look forward to moving forward.
All right, let’s go ahead and wrap up the month of April.
Reading
So far this year I’ve had decent but not really great reading months, at least for me. In January I read 7 books, in February I read 9, and in March I read 8. Considering that for many years my recaps were in the 15-20ish book range, perhaps you’ll understand why I’m underwhelmed with my reading progress overall. Although, I have read some really great books so far this year. But, I’m really happy with my April reading recap, even though I’m still sad I didn’t finish all of the books I wanted to. I simply ran out of time.
That being said, April has been my best reading month, and it felt rather nice to read as much as I did. I am really hoping that this will mean that I can keep up this momentum in more months this year, but we’ll see what happens.
This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me by Ilona Andrews — 5 stars
Daughter of Crows by Mark Lawrence — 4 stars
The Tricky Business of Faerie Bargains by Reena McCarty — 4 stars
Overcoming Writer’s Block: The Writer’s Guide to Beating the Blank Page by Marcy Pusey — 4 stars
Level Up For Love by Lenora Woods — 5 stars (To Be Released Sept 8th, so review coming later)
Omniscient Reader’s Viewpoint Vol 2 by singNsong, UMI (REDICE STUDIO), and Sleepy-C– 4 stars
Omniscient Reader’s Viewpoint Vol 3 by singNsong, UMI (REDICE STUDIO), and Sleepy-C (3B2S STUDIO) — 4 stars
Pucking Wild by Emily Rath — 4.5 stars
Long Live Evil by Sarah Rees Brennan — 4 stars
The Wolf and the Crown of Blood by Elizabeth May — 5 stars
Stay for a Spell by Amy Coombe — 4 stars
Writing
I wrote actual words this month!
So, the place we work was bought out by another company and the transfer went through towards the end of January. This month we received our first quarter profit sharing bonus check. At the same time the check came in, Freewrite was having a warehouse sale where they had a number of their products at a decent discount.
I’ve been looking into the Freewrite Traveler for at least a year or two, but kept telling myself no because it was a pretty hefty cost. The bonus check was actually enough to cover a discounted Traveler…so I bought one. And it arrived one day after the start of the Write Brave Challenge (April 15-May 15). My goal for that is to write 500 words per day. So far, I’m succeeding, which is awesome, but I’ll have the final WBC count in my May wrap-up.
I’m actually planning a whole Weekend Writer post about my experience with the Freewrite Traveler so far, so I don’t want to talk about it too much, but so far it has been working for me.
As I’m writing this, I still have a few days left in the month, so I’ll have to circle back after my writing session on April 30th to say how many words total I wrote this month, but it was a good deal more than zero, so I’m very happy.
I’m sure a lot of the words aren’t that great. Right now I’m not really allowing myself to go back and read over what I’ve written or anything, and I’m sure some of it is rambling and awkward, but you can’t edit a blank page, so at least I have something I can come back to and edit later.
Okay, final word count for the month: 7,187
Now, I know that is technically a little shy of my 500 words per day goal, but I lost out on writing time due to a very last minute trip to Ohio for David’s grandpa’s funeral. And that’s a completely valid reason to lose some writing time. It was more important to be there for David and his family.
I’m still proud of my writing progress and will catch up on my word count before the end of the WBC. Between my normal days off work and my planned vacation to Ohio soon, I think I’ll be able to make some good writing progress.
Blogging
Weekend Writer: Write Brave Challenge 2026
My Top Ten Reads of 2025 (July – Dec Edition)
NetGalley Review: How to Write Romantasy by Jenna Moreci
What I Hope to Read in May 2026
Trips/Conventions
There isn’t much of an update on Gen Con yet for this year. We have our tickets for the convention and we have our hotel booked and paid for. The event catalog goes live May 3 and event tickets actually go on sale May 17, so there will be more of an update on that front next month.
Also next month we’ll be spending basically a week in Ohio with my mom. I don’t exactly know what we’re planning on doing, aside from visiting a couple eateries and making some nice meals at the rental. I think we might still be going to spend a day at Put-in-Bay, but I don’t know for sure. Obviously, I’ll be able to include this in the wrap-up next month.
For an actual recap, David and I went down to Hannibal, Missouri, for a couple days to celebrate nine years of dating. Yes, we still celebrate our dating anniversary as well as our wedding anniversary, which is fun because they’re almost six months apart. We got to go to the Mark Twain cave, which was the inspiration for a number of scenes in Twain’s books, and we toured a number of the homes of folks who were the inspiration for some of the characters. It was a really fun time, but we’ll probably go back again because we didn’t have enough time to visit a bunch of the antique shops.
All right, well that is all from me for today. Thank you so much for stopping by, and I’ll be back soon with more geeky content.
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