February Highlights

  A little hard to believe that it's the end of the second month of 2017. I'll probably say that every month - as always.

  Similar to January, February started off relatively quiet but became a crazy mess of relative productivity? That I'm pretty pumped about.

  Allow me to relive a little of it...

LIFE EVENTS

• Jonathan and I took a hike to Mt. Baldy in Kananaskis, which was pretty fun. It was our second "couple" hike (the previous one was when he proposed). We were going to go to a place near Barrier Lake but it was so violently windy that day we couldn't even cross the dam without almost being blown off - so we changed our plans. :P

We had a lovely view...

• I went wedding dress shopping this month and got my dress! That was super fun and exciting. I took my mom, two of my sisters, my future mother-in-law and sisters-in-law. I am pretty excited about it and looking forward to donning it for August 19th. :)

The dress-hunting crew

• I think I made some huge personal improvements in my jumping equitation this month which I'm incredibly excited about. We'll see what the coming month brings. 

• When Jonathan and his family went on vacation this past week I got to house-sit/dog-sit/lizard-sit. Which wasn't exactly fun since I was missing him but I do always enjoy getting the chance to have a house all to myself - even if it means feeding the lizard live crickets. Bleck. 
• Finally got to meet my friend's new baby, Obsidian. He was super premature but has come along amazingly well and he's pretty adorable. 

WRITING LIFE

  I did get a fair bit of writing done this month. Not as much as desired - but I never do as much as desired. :P I got a little further into The Snow Dragon, wrote another few chapters of The Wandering, edited up some more of The Sorceress and the Squid and finished my submission for my writing course - the first chapter of Thin-Skinned. 

  The Snow Dragon took a ridiculous turn to places I didn't expect and I'm kind of scrambling to get it back under some sort of control, though I'm pretty excited to see what will happen. 

  I've been steadily working on The Wandering and finished quite a bit more of it this month - now I am at chapter fifteen, which is half-way to half-way through it! Huzzah!

  Some exciting news concerning The Sorceress and the Squid is that I've FOUND AN EDITOR TO SEND IT TO!! I'm super excited about this and definitely looking into publishing in the near future. If anyone has any marketing/self-publishing tips for me I would be super super grateful. Please, please send them my way! In the meantime, I will keep you updated as my little novel goes off to be polished and perfected...

  Finally, I have written almost three chapters of Thin-Skinned and am really enjoying it. It's quite a different story than the ones I've been working on lately, but it will be fun to get back into futuristic/lab/dystopia/angsty stuff again. I can't wait to keep writing!

READING LIFE

  I started out this month really sucking with the reading and decided that my rather ambitious goal of 50 books for the year (ambitious for my schedule anyway) just wasn't going to happen. So I brought it down to 24 - two books per month - and now I'm ahead! Mwahaha. 

  This month I read...

   

1984 by George Orwell

Since the American election people have been comparing the Trump presidency to this book so I thought I would read it and check it out. Spoiler alert: It's nothing like the Trump presidency. It's a political commentary on socialism. Also, it's terribly depressing because George Orwell wrote it. So if you like stories with happy endings absolutely do not read this because you will not experience a single shred of happiness the entire time. Just, don't. 

However, if you enjoy being depressed as well as intellectually stimulated - this book is for you!

It was definitely a mind-bending read for sure, my favorite book of the month. 4.5/5

CORALINE by Neil Gaiman

This was a pretty great book as well. I got into Neil Gaiman last year with Ocean at the End of the Lane and have been really enjoying all his stories since. Coraline was a nice size book, easily devoured in an hour or so, and gave a pretty excellent story. It was a little creepy and even had my heart literally racing at one point, but it was awesome. I really enjoyed it a lot. 

4.5/5

MILKWEED by Jerry Spinelli 

I had never heard of this book before Valentine's Day when Jonathan and I went to Value Village and picked out a book for each other as a gift. This is the one he picked for me. Similar to Coraline, it is a shorter book and I read it also in about an hour. It was a really cool story set in WWII about a boy who ends up in one of the ghettos in Warsaw. It was a pretty neat little story and I definitely enjoyed the time I spent reading it. 

4/5

I also started That Hideous Strength by CS Lewis this month - not near finished but I do enjoy a good CS Lewis book so I'll probably be letting you know how it is next month. 

BLOGGING LIFE

  Astonishingly I'm still managing to post every week. I am quite surprised with myself, but also quite pleased. I really really hope that I can keep it up. 

  By the way, I'm still very interested in doing a guest post/hosting a guest post. Let me know if you are too!

  This month's blogging stats:

• Pageviews: 4,829
• Followers: 14 (up a little again!)
• Posts: 55

 GOALS

Goals for February...

• Read 6 books | Didn't really happen - but I did read 3 which is half-way so that's something.
• Finish 1st draft of The Snow Dragon | Don't know what I'm thinking here, but apparently the story has a mind of it's own and doesn't want to be finished. 
• Write 3 chapters of The Wandering | Pretty well did this one, which I am glad about - I did something, yay!
• Find editor for The Sorceress and the Squid | DID THIS and I'm so excited!!!

Goals for March...

• Get The Sorceress and the Squid sent off to the editor!! 
• 1-2 chapters of The Wandering written?
• Read at least 2 books - hopefully more if possible
• Try to get somewhere with The Snow Dragon?

  Well, that about sums up my month. How was yours? Did you do anything special or out of the ordinary? How are you coming with your own writing goals? Let me know in the comments below!