The Sunday Post is hosted by the wonderful Kimberly, the Caffeinated Book Reviewer. It’s a chance to share news, recap the past week, take a look ahead, and showcase our new treasures—I mean books!
Last Week
If you tried to visit the blog this week, you may have run into either a “Bad Gateway” message, or discovered that the site was up but lacked the security padlock (the “s” in https.) It took me several days to get all that sorted out with my hosting service, but everything should be fine now.
Other than a couple of medical appointments, it was a pretty uneventful week for me personally. I took advantage of not having appointments on Thursday to do more writing.
I’ll be spending this week writing as well — when I’m not preparing for Thanksgiving. If you celebrate Thanksgiving, I wish you a joyous gathering of family and/or friends. My husband and I will be celebrating it by ourselves, but we’re cooking a full Thanksgiving meal. For us it is more of a family tradition and a thanksgiving for the harvest and our blessings than a celebration of a historical event… and all our family are far away.
The weather has turned colder (more seasonal) and most of the leaves have fallen. It truly feels like November now. I will miss the beautiful fall colors, but November has its own beauty.
NaNoWriMo update: My NaNoWriMo progress stalled last weekend due to a project deadline (for a Spinners & Weavers Guild program, not work) and the aftermath of my Covid booster. I went four days with no novel writing, which I really couldn’t afford. But by Tuesday I was back in the proverbial saddle, though my word count remained under the daily goal most of the week. At this point, I’m no longer sure whether I can make up the deficit by the end of the month — although I’m certainly going to do my best! But even if I don’t end up “winning” NaNoWriMo (50,000 words), I will still feel like I have won, because I have finally started and made progress on a story I have wanted to write for nearly a decade. And I don’t plan to stop writing when NaNoWriMo ends. Total words written as of Saturday, 11/19: 20,034. Where I should be: 31,673.
Recent Posts
- Sunday Post – 11/13/2022
- NaNoWriMo 2022 – Past the Halfway Point
- The Twitter Debacle
- Sunday Post – 11/20/2022 – this post
Looking Ahead
- WIP Wednesday, 11/23/2022 – Hats for Survivors
- Sunday Post – 11/27/2022
The Backlist Reader Challenge
The Backlist Reader Challenge will be back in 2023! The rules will be basically the same as they were this year, with the dates updated. Watch for the Rules & Sign-Up post in early December!
What I’ve Been Reading/Watching
Reading: I haven’t been reading very much, because of NaNoWriMo. I am currently reading Glamour in Glass by Mary Robinette Kowal (book #2 in the Glamourist Histories) and The Reluctant Countess by Eloisa James (ARC.) I started Ship Wrecked but I have mixed feelings about it, so I put it aside for now.
I’m also reading No Plot? No Problem!, a book about writing a novel in a month by Chris Baty, the founder of NaNoWriMo.
Listening to: Season 2 of the Writing Excuses podcast. And I squeezed in two episodes of Smart Podcast Trashy Books: an interview with the owner of a new romance bookstore (Meet Cute, in San Diego), and an interview with Mur Lafferty about her book Station Eternity, which I loved. Oh, and I listened to a 99% Invisible on the history of bicycles.
Watching: As with last week, I’m not watching very much. I did watch several Nature episodes: two on the Alps, one on Lapland, and one on American ospreys. I find nature documentaries are really good when I don’t have a lot of mental energy to spare.
Added to the Hoard this week
For Review or Consideration
Many thanks to St. Martins/Minotaur for Of Manners and Murder!
Library Books
Library:
Purchased (Kindle, print, or audio)
Print: I have been collecting P.J. Lynch’s illustrated books for a while, but I recently added Ruth Sanderson and Gennady Spirin to the list of illustrators whose work I collect. The other two books simply caught my interest; one is a cookbook of treats and collection of games from children’s books, while the other tells the story of well-known British ballads in graphic-novel form, with text adapted by authors including Charles de Lint, Neil Gaiman, and Jane Yolen. Titles: Golden Dreams: The Art of Ruth Sanderson; A Castle Full of Cats; The Bee-Man of Orn; Yakov and the Seven Thieves; Turkish Delight & Treasure Hunts; The Book of Ballads
Kindle: The Christmas Caper; Marion Lane and the Deadly Rose; A Crimson Warning; Frogkisser!; Six Wakes; The Fairy Tellers; Killer Party (reviewed); Hospitality and Homicide (reviewed) (Click title for Goodreads page or my review.)
Audiobooks: An Artless Demise; A Wicked Conceit; Glamour in Glass
Greg
Ooh sorry about the TEST but I tried t ocomment over the weekend and got error messages. Anyway- trying to remember what I commented lol but I feel the same way about thanksgiving. I love Nature’s docs. And it must be such a good feeling on the writing- making progress on something you’ve wanted to work on so long. 🙂
I love Charles Vess’ work. And the Tasha Alexander’s I’ve read as well.
Greg recently posted…Cover Love Post Apocalyptic
Lark_Bookwyrm
No worries – I deleted the “test” comment for you. So the blog went completely offline last week. In the process of figuring out why and fixing it, the tech support guy at my hosting service noticed my other website had been under a bot attack for days. He talked me into switching to a security package that added a firewall… and that ended up blocking comments. It took several service tickets to get it all sorted out, but as far as I know, everything is back up and running now.
It does feel good to be making progress on writing, even if it’s not as much progress as I had hoped. But that’s OK — all progress is a win in my book! And I’m still learning how I write best, and what my speed is.