August 2014 Wrap-up, September Preview

Mostly book reviews and author spotlights on the blog lately; now it's time to check in with what I'm up to.

In August, I more than doubled my reading goal for Clean Out Your eReader Summer Vacation, with 20 books on the list and a few more to add before it's all over. Still catching up on the reviews; they'll be up later in the week. I also finished reading Midnight Tides, book 5 of The Malazan Book of the Fallen, by Steven Erikson.

I also had a goal to write 500 words a day, for a monthly total of 11,500 (allowing for several days of not writing) and finish the Tales of Azara collection. I also hoped to plan my next project (working title: The Source-fixer) and start writing that. On the days when I wrote I averaged well over 500 words and I did finish Tales of Azara (or at least the stories I had planned; I'm not calling the whole collection finished because I might come up with a couple more ideas), but I ran out of stuff to write before I got to 11,500 words.

I also hoped to finish the revision of Daughter of the Wildings, but it's going to end up taking another week or so. The main event in August was taking our younger son to Northern Arizona University, where he's starting college. We were gone for a few days, and they were busy days, and the whole thing -- traveling, the youngest leaving home, adjusting to not having the same involvement in his life as before and to my changing role -- took a greater physical, mental, and emotional toll on me than I expected it would. So I just haven't been getting much done. I'm a little more than halfway through Book 6 and expect my pace to start to pick up again.

So I didn't quite hit all my goals, but considering that I overestimated my ability to deal with other things going on in my life and underestimated the demands all that other stuff would make, I guess I did ok.

And now, here are my September goals:

1. Finish my COYER book reviews on or before the event ends on the 5th.
2. Plan The Source-fixer and start writing 500 words/day when it's ready
3. Finish the revision of For the Wildings (DoW book 6) by Sept 13 (being generous here; hopefully it won't take me that long!)
4. Start the final revisions and editing on Beneath the Canyons (DoW book 1), aiming for publication later in October.

Also in September, the 19th-22nd, I'll be participating in the Fall Into Romance blog hop. Be sure to check it out for some falling-in-love moments from my books, giveaways, and links to other romantic posts!

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