Happy 2023 everyone. I’m still tinkering away with my review for The Alchemy of Sorrow which is going to be the first review of the new year, and as I am currently laid up on the sofa after a nasty tumble last week, a book tag seemed like the perfect thing to play around with.
I came across this tag on Becky’s Book Blog so please check out her post and the rest of her blog. I’m not tagging anyone in particular, but if it catches your fancy then give it a go.
Taking things easy today with another book tag – this time the Book Blogger Memory Challenge which really was a challenge at times! I found this one via Fi’s Bibliofiles and you check out their answers via this link.
Before we get to the challenge itself though I wanted to shout out a short story by Quenby Olson called ‘A Slumbering Fire’ which you can find here. I read it last week and haven’t stopped thinking about it since. It’s a wonderful, smouldering (on more than one level) of two women finding one another just as their worlds are attempting to push them out of sight and thought. Plus there’s a dragon. So go and check it out!!
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The Rules:
You must answer these questions without looking anything up on the internet and without looking at your bookshelves!!
As we reach the end of May (and why is this year going so quickly?) I’m getting ready for the IFA Summer Challenge which kicks off tomorrow. You can find out more about the challenge either on the website or across in the facebook group, but essentially it is an opportunity to celebrate indie fantasy which is one of my favourite things to do.
I have an ever expanding TBR which I will be tackling, but I am also using the challenge to kick off a SPFBO 8 readalong. I’m in no way associated with SPFBO but it’s a great way to find indie books, and I intend to read as many as I can over the course of the competition and you will be able to find my reviews for that under the Readalong page which has it’s own tag at the top in the menu. While I am reading a lot of these for the IFA challenge, I wanted to make sure that other books were included too, and for the Adventure Wheel which is supposed to get us reading outside our usual genres (depending on what you read) I will be reading non-spfbo books and you can find my TBR for that below.
Something a little lighter to kick off the week, especially as I spent yesterday wishing I could evacuate my own body and this was a wonderful distraction. I’d been searching around for a new tag to play with, and discovered this one via Ashlee at Books Are 42 blog. I’m not sure who created the tag, but a shoutout to them because it was a lot of fun.
Sleep eludes me so I thought I would cobble together a post about my Nanowrimo projects for this year. Firstly, how on earth are we already in November?! Where has this year gone, and oh my goodness I have a book coming out this month. THIS MONTH!
Secondly, yes I did say ‘projects’ as in multiple. Why I hear saner minds ask? Well one, because I was hopelessly indecisive and couldn’t choose between the three side projects that currently live rent-free in my mind, and two, because I love challenging myself during Nanowrimo. I’ve set the goal of 50K for each of the projects in question, but it will not be the end of the world if I don’t reach that – instead my main goal is just to keep adding to what I already have, and try and get the stories taking on a little more shape. My plan is then to let them lie in December, which I will largely be taking off from my original writing to focus on some other writing that has fallen by the wayside (Yes, a holiday from writing to do more writing), and come back to them in the New Year and see where I will go from there, as well as continuing to work on the Citadel series of course.
A looong post for you today. June has crept up on me – how are we halfway through 2021 already? I’m going to be getting emails about Christmas stock soon at work (which feels even weirder as we missed Easter this year). Even with being back at work, time still feels very much out of sync and I’m sat here in June going…huh?
It’s been a challenging year. Lockdown #2 was far harder to endure than the first one, and I was climbing the walls far more than I care to admit, and I have never been so happy to be back at work (although it was a massive shock to the system). However, all that time at home has meant that I’ve done a huge amount of reading and I am currently sat on 130 / 200 for my GR reading goal (although I am still behind on reviews, as reading is often easier than the writing so I’m actually a dozen or so ahead of that but I haven’t added them yet). I’ve also had the opportunity to do some new bookish things this year. I’m a panelist for the BBNYA 2021, and just finished my round one reading and feedback. I’ve also had the chance to do some beta reading which has been fantastic, and I am hopefully going to be helping out with Norsevember later this year.
The Indie Fantasy Addicts Summer Challenge is also just around the corner, and I am busy building a TBR for that and trying to clear my backlog of netgalley and reviews so I can focus on this challenge – and I have some super titles that I’m really looking forward to diving into.
Life – and my blasted back – got in the way again, so here is a very belated final post for the #WyrdAndWonder challenge for the final prompts. It has been a blast taking part again, and it has dug up some old books that I want to revisit – and my poor TBR weeps.
This year Storytellers on Tour have introduced the Ultimate Tour Experience (Information and Rules can be found HERE) which is a fun book bingo challenge based on the books that we read for the various tours and blitzes they run, and this is the first of three check-ins for the year. I have decided to do the challenge on hard mode, so I will only be using one ticket from each book rather than the possible two (otherwise I might already have completed it).
I was tagged in the ‘I’m a sucker for…’ blog challenge by Peter across at The Swordsmith. There are lots of things I enjoy and look out for in books, but the following are the two (plus a third, current obsession) that stand out for me.
Beneath A Thousand Skies 