April 2019 Monthly Wrap-Up

Woo! April is almost over, and these are exciting times for me. I guess I’ll get started with a wrap-up of what happened this month.

Books Read:

This was a great month for books. I read nine books for the first time and reread another one.

• Finale – Stephanie Garber
• No Place Like Here – Christina June
• When Dimple Met Rishi – Sandhya Menon
• Kingdom of Ash – Sarah J. Maas
• Killing Kennedy – Bill O’Reilly
• The Bear and the Nightingale – Katherine Arden
• Happily and Madly – Alexis Bass
• The Tiger at Midnight – Swati Teerdhala
• Crooked Kingdom – Leigh Bardugo
• Prodigy – Marie Lu (reread)

Blog Stats:

• Twitter: 2008 followers. Yay! Hopefully by next month I’ll pass 2019. It’s kinda cool to have the same followers as years that you remember.
• Blog visits seem to be about the same. Maybe kind of boring, but I seem to hit some sort of magical threshold with publishers and I’ve been getting a lot of “yes” answers when I request ARCs, so it’s cool.

Writing:

I went to two great conferences this month and am working on the third draft to THE BRIGHTNESS OF SHADOW. But at the moment, it’s like when you go to a house that’s under construction and everything looks like a mess? That’s what the third draft currently looks like. I ripped out 10,000 words, changed one scene, and that one scene I changed is going to force me to rewrite like 4 chapters.

But this is okay because when draft 3 is done, it’s going to be a lot better. There have been paragraphs that I’ve been redoing as I have time, and they look so much better. It’s slow, but steady going. I want this to be as good as possible before I start sending it out. I haven’t even gotten around to beta readers yet; hopefully after this draft.

I entered two contests this month. I’ve decided to go with the philosophy of making rejections a game (because every writer gets a bunch of them). So every time I submit something, I’m just going to assume it’s a rejection (although I’m happy with yes too, LOL). I have a spreadsheet with a cool little thermometer. Getting a rejection means your work is getting out there! That is what’s important to me, is trying.

Life:

Yay! I get my new laptop in two days? This one is so slow and while it was nice for something cheap, it’s not what I really want in something I’m going to use for work every day.

I’m also getting a new phone. My iPhone 6s got a cracked screen earlier today. The good news is… with my husband’s new job, we’ll be able to afford an upgrade. It still works, so between now and Sunday, I still have a phone I can use, but I’m getting a new one this weekend.

We did have another trip to the hospital, but such is life. Sometimes you just have to deal with things.

My husband seems to be doing well at his new job, which is good.

So that was April. I’m excited for so many things in May. It’s my last month before I start working at home again! I was approved to read some awesome-sounding ARCs, and since I’ve already read Finale (the only pre-order I have for next month) there are a lot of backlist books I’m going to be able to read!