Hey all, Sam here.
All right, so it has been a pretty eventful month. There were a decent number of books read, a few blog posts written, and a couple of small trips accomplished. All in all, I’m decently happy with this wrap-up, although I wish there was more to report in the blogging and writing areas. But hopefully those will be areas that will see great improvements in November and December, as I am trying to focus on writing due to PaWriCo.
Anyway, I’m trying not to take too much time before finalizing this blog post, seeing as how I’ve had a couple months this year where the recap post didn’t happen until halfway through the following month. That is so behind my normal schedule. I like getting the month recap up in the first few days of the next month, because that feels nice and timely. That’s also why my TBRs tend to happen in the last handful of days in the month. Now if only I could make that timeliness work with reviewing all the books I’ve read.
Let’s just go ahead and jump on into all the things that were accomplished in October, starting with reading!
Reading
Y’all, I read 19 books in October, and it felt awesome. For the first part of the month I was worried that I wasn’t going to get much accomplished, because I had only read like one or two books in the first 10 days or so of the month, but I began to pick up the pace and get into some great reads that I flew through. I imagine if I had had a few more days I could have finished another three or four books, but I might just read those to start November off.
That being said, reading is not my main focus for November. I’m already at 109 books read for the year (unless I’ve missed a book) and my goal was set at 100, so it’s fine if I slow down a tiny smidge on reading to focus on writing and on tidying up and organizing the house a bit better. There are still a few books I am really hoping to finish before the end of the year, but I want to work on creative output a little more instead of creative input.
Okay, let’s go ahead and do a quick rundown of all the books I read in October.
The Hearth Witch’s Guide to Spite and Spellwork by Kiri Callaghan — 4 stars
Maggie and Arthur’s Magic Moment by Leslie Rene — 4 stars
Lycans & Lattes by Ali K Mulford and K. Elle Morrison — 4.5 stars
Baldur’s Gate 3: Astarion by T. Kingfisher — 5 stars
Urban Shaman by C.E. Murphy — 4 stars
Hide the Witches by Miranda Lyn — 4.5 stars
The Someday Garden by Ashley Poston — 4 stars
Banshee Cries by C.E. Murphy — 4.5 stars
Hemlock & Silver by T. Kingfisher — 4 stars
Swordheart by T. Kingfisher — 4.5 stars
The Executioners Three by Susan Dennard — 3.5 stars
A Fellowship of Curses & Cats by J. Penner — 4.5 stars
The Bloodless Princes by Charlotte Bond — 4 stars
A Fellowship of Academics & Arts by J Penner — 4.5 stars
The Demon Overlord’s Retirement Plan by M.H. Foster — 3.5 stars
Remedial Magic by Melissa Marr — 3.5 stars
Thunderbird Falls by C.E. Murphy — 4.5 stars
Legends & Lattes Graphic Novel by Travis Baldree, adapted by Samuel Sattin, and Illustrated by Shanti Riggers and Sarah Webb — 5 stars
Verity Vox and the Curse of Foxfire by Don Martin — 4.5 stars
Writing
October was not really a month of writing. I could say that at least I was thinking about the characters and the story, and there’s a part of me that is always thinking on those topics, but that is starting to feel like an excuse or a cop out during those months when no words end up on the page. I definitely need to work on actually spending time writing my stories instead of just dreaming about them.
Obviously I will be participating in PaWriCo in November, December, and January, so hopefully I’ll actually end the writing challenge with an okay number of words on my stories. If all goes very well then I’ll have gotten into a writing habit again and be able to continue writing even after PaWriCo ends.
Blogging
Well, I didn’t really do much in the way of blogging, even when I was hoping to catch up on everything I didn’t finish from September. I think part of my “tidying up the house” tasks will also include tidying up the blog a bit, and that’ll mean clearing out some of my draft posts. I have way too many halfway finished posts.
Pathfinders Writing Collective (PaWriCo26)
Trips/Conventions
One of the activities we enjoy doing in the fall is visiting a kind of local farm that has all sorts of activities including a corn maze, and then running around enjoying ourselves before stopping in the retail barn to buy pumpkins and some jams, jellies, sauces, and cider. The only problem with our visit this time was that it was a couple days after some heavy rain and there were a lot of muddy areas in the corn maze…and then it didn’t feel much like fall because it was about 80 degrees out. Oh well, we weren’t going to let that ruin our fun.
Well, we didn’t do much in the way of trips this month, because we just had a big trip at the end of last month, but we did manage to go for one last little camping adventure in Hannibal, MO. They were turning off the water to the bathroom/shower house on Nov 1, so this really was our last opportunity to camp in our tent for this year. With the leaves really changing color and the weather finally acting like fall (it was decently chilly once the sun went down, it was an overall lovely time…and we basically spent all of it just hanging out and reading or building up a nice campfire and roasting some marshmallows. We might do another trip or two to Hannibal before spring, but it will be a hotel stay instead of a tent stay. There’s too many fun restaurants and shops to visit.
And we’ve already started talking about trips and conventions for next year, especially since Critical Role announced their 2027 Live Show tour and they will be back in Indy during Gen Con. Tickets for the live show will be going on sale this week, so hopefully we’ll be able to snag a couple.
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.
