July Monthly Wrap-Up

So it’s already the last day of July, and another time to do a monthly wrap-up.  Here is what happened for the month of July:

Books Read:

I finished 10 books this month, plus I also reread Like Normal People, since it’s a goal of mine to finish it in August.  When I was reading through it, I discovered a minor error that persists through the book, so I’ll probably go through the published copy on AO3 and fix them.

• Origin – Dan Brown
• Ever the Hunted – Erin Summerill
• Throne of Glass – Sarah J. Maas
• The House of One Thousand Eyes – Michelle Barker
• Batman: Nightwalker – Marie Lu
• Summer Days and Summer Nights – Various Authors
• 1,000 Years, 1,000 People – Various Authors
• Red Queen – Victoria Aveyard
• Harbor Me – Jacqueline Woodson

Blog Stats

• I gained 41 Twitter followers this month, up to 1570.  My goal was 1550; a few days ago I was three away from that goal, but I got a boost at the end of the month for some reason.
• I have 7k monthly views per month on Pinterest.
• I have about 250 monthly users on my blog.  Tuesdays are generally my best day (Top Ten Tuesdays).
• I have 9 posts written that haven’t been posted yet.  I have generally been able to keep up with my scheduled posts (I have a calendar that tells me what posts I want to publish when) even though I now have to work again.

Writing

• I won Camp NaNoWriMo this month with a challenge that I got on Facebook.  I was challenged to write a Gen Fusion fic… or a fanfict without a love relationship that combined two different fandoms.  I wrote My New Best Friend with those parameters, and I think it turned out well.
• I realized that we only have three more months before NaNoWriMo this year, and I have four works in progress.  Not going to be able to finish them all.  So… I have decided to put Gamers on hiatus until 2019.  I’m not sure where I’m going with that anyway; I just have the characters and an inkling of what’s going to happen, but I don’t know for sure.  The other fics are all at least 2/3 complete, and I know how I want to end them all.  So I’m going to try to finish the first drafts at least.

Life

This month I had to go back to work after taking a leave of absence for a month.  Life has been pretty busy as a result, but I still was able to get a lot done.

We have decided to let my daughter go to public school this year… ugh.  She’s been homeschooled since she was 3 1/2.  I don’t know if she’ll like it, having to get up early every day like that, doing her homework, etc.  We told her that she can’t fake being sick and she has to do her homework, but this is what she wants… so… she’ll have to live with it.  We’re trying to get her either into an art-focused charter school or a school in another district, because her default school is evidently not that good.

In August, I start teaching Spanish and German again.  It will be my third year teaching these classes.  I still get nervous teaching them, even though I’ve done this twice.

So that’s all for this month.  Hopefully I’ll be able to report that I FINALLY finished writing Like Normal People in August!