October Monthly Wrap Up

Happy Halloween everyone! We're having a soggy, cloudy, cold Halloween this year... It's supposed to snow later today! 😱 It'll last maybe through night because tomorrow is supposed to be sunny so any snow we get will melt away. But still... that's just a little too early to even be mentioning snow.

I'm honestly kind of sad October's gone by so quickly... Once November hits, it feels like we're way too close to Christmas and then the end of the year which I'm not sure I'm ready for. I'm excited for Thanksgiving and for Christmas of course but also.. I don't want November to go by as quickly as October has. I want to slow down and not worry so much and just enjoy the Fall weather before it gives way to snowy coldness.

Anywho, onto the monthly wrap up!

October Writing: October has been a pretty good writing month. I sort of felt lacking in the writing-department near the end, but then I remembered I can start working on St. Croix Falls 3 for Nanowrimo, so I started that early cus why not? I worked hard to get Sterling Silver revised and published by the end of the month. Almost all of October was filled with rewriting and writing news for Sterling Silver, filling plot holes and fixing inconsistencies. Now I'm onto the craziness of marketing and promotion, which I find much more stressful than the actual writing and revising of the book. But yeah... October was a good month and I don't want to sound full of myself, but I'm pretty proud of myself for having Sterling Silver ready and published in one month. Seriously... that book was kind of a mess. I've been writing and rewriting it for four years! And then to have it all come together and to get it revised and edited and published in one month? That was absolutely incredible. I feel like I keep pushing myself and succeeding. And I never would have been able to get to where I am today without Kirsten Oliphant's podcast Create If Writing. That podcast and her amazing advise gave me the push I needed to take my author career to the next level. I highly recommend it to writers, especially those going into the self-publishing industry.

October Reading: *cringes* Again... I've been a pretty bad reader this month. I've just been super busy with writing, but in November I really want to give myself more time to read. Actually, I know for sure that I will be making time because two of my most anticipated reads of the year are coming out: the next Keeper of the Lost Cities book and The Queen of Nothing. I, for sure, will be making the time to read those. This month, however... I've read two. Well parts of two. I'm about half way through Academy of Stolen Magic.

I'm not sure I'll finish it or not... I really enjoyed the first book, but I feel like the romance is kind of fizzling out for me in book 2. Maybe I'm just not in the right mood for an academy book right now and it's just not doing it for me.

At the moment though, I'm in the middle of reading The Beautiful by Renee Ahdieh and am loving it. The romance is the best! Sebastian is amazing and I love the chemistry the MC Celine and him have. 😍 Plus it's set in 1860's New Orleans with a murderer on the loose that may or may not be a vampire and Sebastian definitely has something mysterious going on with him. Uph... it's just the best.

This book is right up my ally and puts me in the mood to reread The Coldest Girl in Coldtown. Maybe after the next Keeper book comes out next week and I finish that, I'll read Coldest Girl while i wait for The Queen of Nothing.

October Life Stuff: I had a good October. The weather was beautiful and chilly just how I like it. We got to go to some parks and take in the Fall beauty. We went and visited my aunt and grandparents and took family pictures at one of my favorite parks. I got to eat a caramel apple. 😋 We carved pumpkins and I got to write a fun paper for my Native American religions class about what it means to be indigenous. I'm pretty proud of that paper actually. I put a lot of time and effort into it. I'm also getting to write an ethnography about the Cherokee for my Native American Anthropology class. I had this realization last night of how much I'm loving these classes. I realized how much I've loved learning about the Native American cultures and tribes and I'm hoping I'll be able to take more next semester.

And now I get to finish October off with Halloween. I don't know how much trick or treating we'll be doing but I know we're going to have some friends over, eat some candy, hang out, have fun in costumes and just hang.

Looking Forward to November: Nanowrimo starts tomorrow and... I think I'm actually ready for it which surprises me. I realized half way through this month that I needed to plan St. Croix 3. For first drafts I can just write those. I don't usually plan, but sequels and third books and so on? I have to plot those out beforehand before I can start writing them. So I got all the planning done and stuff and now I'm ready for November to start drafting St. Croix Falls 3. I'm hoping to finish it by the end of the month (possibly before depending on how busy I am). My main focus is to revise St. Croix Falls 2, get a blurb together, reveal the title and have it published by the end of November. It'll be a little tight, but I think I'll manage it. Also, did I mention I'm excited for Thanksgiving?? We're going to go see Frozen 2 with my aunt and cousins on Thanksgiving so I can't wait for that!

So yeah... that's how my October has gone. I'm so thankful about how the month ended up turning out and that it was a good month. I hope November goes just as smoothly.

How did your October go? If you do Halloween, what are you dressing up as today? (I'll be Cinderella today which is so fun)!