The Sunday Post is hosted by the wonderful Kimberly, the Caffeinated Reviewer. It’s a chance to share news, recap the past week, take a look ahead, and showcase our new treasures—I mean books!
This week I’m also participating in The Sunday Salon hosted by Deb at Readerbuzz, and Stacking the Shelves hosted by Marlene at Reading Reality.
Happy Mother’s Day! If you are a mother, I wish you much happiness. If you have lost your mother or your child, or your relationship with them is strained, I wish you comfort and peace.
The Past Week
In real life: We are celebrating Mother’s Day with my mother for the first time in decades! She and my stepdad are on an extended trip east, visiting friends and family and doing some geneaology work. We spent Friday with them in Maryland and Pennsylvania, exploring some of the sites associated with my maternal ancestors. My parents spent Saturday with friends, and are arriving today to spend a couple more days with us before going on to visit another set of dear friends.
I was disappointed to miss the widespread aurora borealis on Friday night, due to cloud cover and rain. As I write this on Saturday afternoon, I still hope to get a chance to see it on Saturday night, weather permitting. Though since we are back in Virginia, it might not be visible this far south.
The tree guy came on Tuesday with a couple of helpers. They trimmed branches and took down several dead, dying, or badly leaning trees, including one that the woodpeckers had been going to town on. When shown a photo, Robin declared it “a lot of hole with a little bit of tree around it!” By the time the tree was taken down, there were actually seven or eight sizeable woodpecker holes ranged vertically along the trunk. (None of the holes contained a nest, thank goodness.) One good wind and we might have had half a tree on our roof!
Writing accountability: My minimum goal is an achievable 250 words every day (fiction or other creative writing. Book reviews and blog posts don’t count.) In the past week: I’m still working on the first draft of a long fanfic. I wrote 7 days this week. It felt like 6 days, because I started writing Wednesday night and kept going past midnight into Thursday “morning,” getting in more than my 250 words both before and after midnight. Then I didn’t have time to write on Thursday evening because our travel made it impossible. So it felt as though I didn’t write on Thursday, but technically I did. Word count for the week: 3,433 words (my goal was 1,750 for the week.) That included 1092 words of brainstorming on Wednesday night. I am using 4theWords to gamify my writing sprints.
Recent Posts
- Sunday Post – 5/12/2024
- Bookshops & Bonedust, by Travis Baldree (audiobook review)
- Happy Mother’s Day! Sunday Post – 5/12/2024 – this post
Looking Ahead
- NaNoWriMo Inspirations, by David Farland – review
- – Top 10 Tuesday, tentative
- other reviews TBD
- Sunday Post – 5/19/2024
What I’ve Been Reading/Watching
Reading: I finished reading The Magic of Four by Celia Lake. As a fan who has read all her other books, I enjoyed it, but I wouldn’t recommend starting with this books if you are new to her work. It really works best if you have some background on the parents of the four main characters, who all appear in previous books. Also, The Magic of Four is not representative of the series; most of Celia’s books are romances, while this is a school story with no romance at all.
I finished NaNoWriMo Inspirations by Dave Farland. I continued reading A Deceptive Composition, the 12th Lady Darby mystery by Anna Lee Huber, which I am buddy-reading with Sophia Rose, who reviews at Books of My Heart and elsewhere. I’m three-quarters done with Becoming Crone by Lydia M. Hawke, a contemporary fantasy (urban fantasy) about a 60-year-old chosen-one heroine. I’m still enjoying The Ornithologist’s Field Guide to Love by India Holton (ARC.)
Listening to: I’m debating whether to return to The Cartographers (Peng Shepherd) right away, or start something quicker. I’ll probably continue with The Cartographers for now. In podcasts, I finished up season 9 of the Writing Excuses podcast, and started season 10.
Watching: Between cleaning the house for my parents’ visit, writing time, and Mr. Bookwyrm’s work schedule, we didn’t watch anything this week.
Playing: Some of the NYT word games, mostly Wordle, Connections, the Spelling Bee, and Strands (a new game currently in beta.) I also played some Pokémon Go on our brief trip north.
Added to the Hoard
Purchased or Free (Kindle, print, or audio)
Kindle: The Poisoner’s Ring; Braiding Sweetgrass; Handbook for Dragon Slayers; A Taste of Gold and Iron; Small Town, Big Magic; Three Can Keep a Secret; The Golden Chance
Anne - Books of My Heart
I’m glad you got some of the work done around, kept up with your writing and got to spend family time. Happy Mother’s Day!
Anne – Books of My Heart This is my Sunday Post
Anne – Books of My Heart recently posted…Her Little Flowers by Shannon Morgan @morgan_shan @KensingtonBooks @sophiarose1816 #ThriftyThursday
Harvee
Enjoy Mother’s Day with your mom! Precious times.
Harvee recently posted…Sunday Salon: What I’m Reading and Watching
Sherry
Happy Mother’s Day! I like how you gamify your sprints – that’s cool! I also like how you added your writing accountability to your post – I think I will do that next week! Thank you for the idea. Enjoy your reads this week!
Aj @ Read All The Things!
I was devastated that I missed the aurora borealis. It’s been raining since Thursday night! I hope you have a good week.
Aj @ Read All The Things! recently posted…The Sunday Post #367
Katherine
How wonderful that you were able to spend Mother’s Day with your mother and that you got so much writing done! We missed the aurora borealis too. There were some people in our area who got some gorgeous pictures but we mostly just think we might have seen a little it of purple and maybe a dash of green but we might have been making it up. I hope you’re having a great week!