August Wrap-Up

Hey all, Sam here.

So, I had originally planned to have this released on September 2nd. You know, close to the beginning of the month like I do with pretty much all of my wrap-ups. The only thing I had left to do was this little intro section. But work was exhausting on Aug 31 and Sept 1, so I just rested on the 2nd and figured I’d get the intro written and the post live on the 3rd.

What actually ended up happening was an entire weekend spent relieving stress by David and I creating seasonal characters on Diablo IV and going on a demon killing rampage through the seasonal quest line. This meant that I kept forgetting to get this post finalized.

I’m sorry about that. I do have some other posts planned for this month, so hopefully I’ll be able to get those written and posted in a timely manner. I’m certainly going to try. It includes one or two Tabletop Tuesday posts, as well as a couple Weekend Writer related posts.

Anyway, let’s finally get around to discussing what I accomplished in the realms of reading, writing, blogging, and trips/conventions during the month of August.

Reading

While August wasn’t one of my best months for reading, it wasn’t overall bad. In fact I read a few absolutely incredible reads, which was fantastic. I do, however, need to write up reviews for pretty much all of these books, so expect to hear more about my thoughts on these reads coming very soon. There are a couple of books that I’ve marked as “review coming soon,” but that is because those are some of my NetGalley reads, so I’m prioritizing their reviews over the others. Overall I’d really like to get back to reviewing every book I read, but it will take time for me to get to that point again.

Structuring Life to Support Creativity: A Resource Book for Creative People by Sandra Tayler — 5 stars

Dungeons & Dragon Dating by Virginia McClain — 4.5 stars

Beautiful Things by Emily Rath — 5 stars

Writing Mr. Wrong by Kelley Armstrong — 4 stars

Godsrain by Liane Merciel — 4.5 stars

Ghost Business by Jen DeLuca — 5 stars (review for this linked in the Blogging section)

Warrior Princess Assassin by Brigid Kemmerer — 5 stars (review coming soon)

Fate’s Bane by C.L. Clark — 4.5 stars (review coming soon)

Blogging

While I did not blog every week in the month of August, I feel like I still didn’t do a terrible job of blogging, although I admit that I can be better about posting relatively consistently instead of a few posts and then nothing for over a week before another smattering of posts again. I’m still working on figuring out a schedule to get everything accomplished that I’d like to.

I will say that my blog views have been consistently steady or improving each month this year, almost nearing the views that I had at the height of this blog back in 2018-2020. That has been a nice surprise for me, although I’m still always hoping for more interaction in the comments section.

Anyway, here’s a list of all the posts I released in the month of August in case you missed one and would want to check it out.

PaWriCo Bookish Bootcamp July 25-31

Gen Con Wrap Up

July Wrap Up

I’m Anticipating the Release of these September Books

NetGalley Review: Casket Case by Lauren Evans

NetGalley Review: Ghost Business by Jen DeLuca

Writing

Aside from a minimal amount of writing, or thinking about writing during Gen Con, I did not spend time writing in August. Honestly this does feel like a bit of a failure, because I had wanted to come home from the convention and get my writing space straightened out and organized so I could actually start sitting down at least a couple times a week to focus on writing.

But August felt utterly exhausting. There was so much to do, and work was extremely busy, which left me feeling even more worn out on my weekends, and I just ended up doing barely anything on my days off.

I need to try and do better in September. Writer’s Atelier is hosting their Write Brave Challenge again from Sept 15-Oct 15, so I’ll probably figure out a goal for that and give it a try, and then October is prep month for the big November-January writing challenge from PaWriCo.

I’ll talk more about both of these writing challenges separately in a future post, especially after I work out what I want my goal to be for each of them.

Trips/Conventions

Well, we did have a big trip/convention in the month of August, and that was Gen Con. I already linked to my Gen Con Wrap Up post in the Blogging section above, so I won’t do it again here. It was a nice time overall, and we’re already talking about our plans for Gen Con 2026.

Looking forward, in September we have one sort of trip planned, and that is to drive up to Cedar Rapids for the Lindsey Stirling/Halestorm concert at the end of the month. I bought tickets for the concert as David’s birthday present. It’ll be his first big concert (no offense to Library Bards, who we saw perform at Gen Con), so I’m hoping it’ll be a fun time.

All right, well that is all from me for today. Thank you so much for stopping by, and I’ll be back soon with more geeky content.