Hey all, Sam here.
Okay, this is a little overdue, but it took me a little longer to recover from Gen Con than I expected. We had a couple of very long days at the convention, and then the two days after we got back, I had to go in to work, so there wasn’t much recovery time. It’s fine, and I think I’ve finally managed to catch up on sleep and recovered myself enough to be ready to hop back into blogging…and hopefully do a little more blogging than I have been lately.
Oh, and I just went on my Goodreads to check my 2026 reading challenge and it had me listed as being a few books behind schedule…and then I looked and noticed that I hadn’t updated it since mid-June (oops), so after getting the rest of my books in there, I’m like 15 books ahead of schedule. Which, okay, is really good, but it’s also nowhere near what I used to read. I used to set my goal at 100 books and hit that milestone by June. Now I’m not hitting it until like October. It seems silly to complain about only reading 120ish books a year, but I got so used to reading 250ish a year, and I kind of miss it. But then I remind myself that I’m also going out for walks or playing disc golf, I’m playing video games, checking out new to me anime, working on my writing projects, playing board games and D&D, and just hanging out with friends. My life is a lot more well-rounded now than it used to be, and that means that I don’t read as much, but that is totally okay.
Anyway, I should probably jump into the wrap-up portion of this post now, so let’s talk about all of the reading, writing, blogging, and trips/conventions I got up to in the month of July.
Reading
It was an okay reading month in July. Obviously it wasn’t even close to matching up with June, but I was so focused on reading that I ignored other things in June. Still, I think seven books in a month is pretty decent, even if four of them were re-reads.
Well Met by Jen DeLuca — 5 stars
Well Played by Jen DeLuca — 5 stars
Well Matched by Jen DeLuca — 5 stars
Well Traveled by Jen DeLuca — 5 stars
Well Versed by Jen DeLuca — 5 stars
Moss’d In Space by Rebecca Thorne — 4.5 stars
Devour Me by Emily Rath — 4.5 stars
Writing
I did manage to jot down a few completed scenes, as well as a couple partially finished scenes for my project goal for the Pathfinders Writing Collective Bookish Bootcamp….but it wasn’t nearly as much writing as I would have liked to get accomplished.
I will say that I’ve been writing up the recaps for the D&D group where I’m a player, and I keep an in-character daily journal as well, so that is a creative pursuit that is connected to the writing project I’ve been working on. It counts a little bit, but still doesn’t get me to reach/achieve my hopeful goals.
My D&D character has been getting memory flashes and echoes of her past lives, and so I’ve been wanting to get some of those written down, so it’s easier to reference them and to understand the past lives. So, hopefully I can work on that some more in August as well. I’d actually like to be able to put more substance in my writing sections of my monthly wrap-ups going forward, but in order to do that I need to actually write more.
Blogging
PaWriCo’s Bookish Bootcamp 2026
Okay, so I definitely could have blogged more in July. I definitely had the time, but we had such a ridiculous heat wave come through that most days it was a relax and try not to overheat struggle. I know I need to do better. I keep looking at my draft posts and seeing the line of half-finished reviews, telling myself that I need to just sit down and finish them up, and then I just…don’t do it. At this point it’s getting a little ridiculous.
Trips/Conventions
Obviously much of July was wrapped up in getting ready for Gen Con, which was July 30th thru August 2nd. I’ll have a full Gen Con wrap-up post up soon. Ooops, well, I already have the wrap-up post up.
We’ve got most of the planning done for our trip to Ohio for the Ohio Renaissance Festival and a few days of enjoying a cabin in Hocking Hills in late September. It’s a little early for our five year wedding anniversary, but we decided a month early was worth it so we could see Jacques Ze Whipper at the Ren Faire.
The only other discussion of trips is talking about doing a few day trips or overnight trips to see a bunch of the indie bookstores in Iowa. They are doing their annual Iowa Indie Bookshop Tour, which is taking place from July 1 until Sept 30th. There are 62 bookstores participating, and while I don’t think I can squeeze all of them in with the time remaining, I’d like to hit up at list 10-20 of them, so we’ll see what happens with that.
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.
Free State of Geek 