Weekly Check-in #43

Hey! Last week was so crazy-busy (at the day job AND at home--getting ready for my kiddo's birthday party, where she invited all her friends to OUR house. Yes, picture fourteen teenagers in your living room, eating tacos, making homemade iced coffees, and watching Dirty Dancing together. It was quite an experience.) that I didn't get anything posted, sorry.

 What I've Been Writing:

So I got some feedback on Impostors and Thieves that made me put aside Book 2 (because it'll change) and do an overhaul on Book 1 in the hopes of making it more marketable. I've been deleting chapters, adding new chapters, moving chapters from later in the story and others to earlier in the story, just all kinds of changes. I have almost all the major moving finished. Then, I'll go through it again (and probably again and again a few more times) to work on the sentence level next! It's at 146,000 words right now.

What I've Been Reading:

So in the past two weeks, I've read three books. I finished off the Meledition series by Danielle Jensen with Hidden Huntress and Warrior Witch. And then my sixteen-year-old (yes, she's sixteen now!) commanded me to start the Throne of Glass series. I really wasn't in the mood to commit myself to an eight-book series just now, but the girl spoke, so I obeyed. Which means I finished Book One, Throne of Glass, this week. And, oh yes, and the child also said I must read them in HER order, so I was not allowed to begin with The Assassin's Blade. But I've heard it can go either way, so that part really didn't matter to me. And it made my kid happy, so I'm happy!

What I've Been Putting on my Shelves:

My husband's Christmas present to me, The Throne of Glass series, came in last week, as did:

• To Sir Phillip, With Love
• The Things We Leave Unfinished (signed!)
• Half City (from Allurial Book Box Sub)
• Metal Slinger and
• Story of my Life.

Then this week, I received The Night Prince. 

Weekly Check-in #42

 What I've been Writing:

Defectors and Queens - This week, I gutted half of Chapter 3, reworked the end, then completely removed all of Chapter 9 and gave it a new one. I'm liking the changes I've made. So now we have 16 completed chapters and 63,000 words written. YAY! Progress.

What I've Been Reading:

Wow! I love snow days. It gives a girl like me loads of reading time. I was in my element, let me tell you. There was hot chocolate. There was a cozy blanket. There were books. Here's what I read since last Friday.

Stolen Songbird: So remember how I went off last week about how those stories where the captive falls for their captor mess up my head? Well, I opened this book about trolls that I was all curious about, and the girl gets freaking kidnapped immediately and forced under this mountain thing so she can marry the troll prince!  UGH. I swear, these books are after me now that I called them out. But this one ended up being fine. It was great, actually. I loved it. The guy didn't want to marry her either and was being forced into it as well, so it turned out to be more of a captive/captive kind of situation...kind of. Anyway, good book. I had to order the next two in the series so I can find out what happens next. 

To Cage a Wild Bird: The troll book was going to be my new favorite book of the year, but then I read this one, and yep. Now, this one's my favorite of 2026. If you read Silver Elite and enjoyed it, I think this one is your cup of tea, too. Similar vibes, similar greatness! I loved it as well.

Rings of Fate: Lots of cute, fun times. Not a cozy romantasy but I probably wouldn't classify it as dark either. It was like: if cozy and dark had a baby together, this is the cute, fun story that would emerge! And score one for skillet weapons! That part made my Tangled-movie-loving heart happy.

Enigma: Now we're talking darker fantasy. Enigma was very gothic. Very academic. Very unique. Lots of mention of doing frisky things in blood, though I don't think they ever actually do. It gave me dangerous, haunting vibes, though, and ended my week with good reads all around.  

What I've Been Buying:

I had a bunch of credit on my Amazon account, so I got four new paperbacks: Hidden Huntress and Warrior Witch (so I can finish up my Stolen Songbird series collection), and then The Ballad of Never After and A Curse for True Love (because I got book one for this series when I went on my Book Crawl in November and needed to get the rest of the series), and finally the new special edition release for Her Soul for Revenge came in! 

And that's been my shelfish week. I bid you a happy National Croissant Day!

Weekly Check-in #41

What I've Been Writing:

This week, I did a lot of reading over what I already wrote in Defectors and Queens, adding and deleting, smoothing out passages, so I haven't added a whole lot of new scenes. The manuscript is at 58,000 words now.

What I've Been Reading:

I finished reading Vengeance of the Pirate Queen and had to immediately hop into another Tricia Levenseller book.  

I was eager for What Fury Brings because I'm one of those people who can enjoy both YA and adult, or hop around from one steamy, spicy level to the next without batting an eyelash. As long as I'm loving the romance, I'm invested. (And I'm starting to learn this is not a common trait for all readers) So when I find an author who'll hop around like that too, I get excited. I really did love What Fury Brings. I couldn't put it down, and I got invested. Plus, the society with gender-reversed roles was shocking and eye-opening. But there's just something about those Stockholm syndrome stories that messes me up, man. I don't want to root for the couple when one of them has basically no freedom at all, and yet I start rooting for them, and it just...it makes me want to rant and get all judgey about things, which is not my normal default mode. It makes me feel wrong in my own body, and my brain isn't okay afterward. But still...engrossing, captivating story! Very thought-provoking.

It messed me up enough, however, that I kept being all ranty and judgey when I started reading a new book, and I could not for the life of me like the heroine. I mean, this self-serving, control-seeking, social-jumping murderer had no redeeming qualities at all, so I put that one aside and started a new story. We'll see if the next book shakes me out of my funky state.

What I've Been Stacking on My Shelves:

Got my two new Off-Campus books this week!! Hooray for The Score and The Mistake. Then, the final monthly subscription book I purchased from Bookish Box came in. Go, The Enchanted Greenhouse. And my obsession with Danielle Jensen continues, so I ordered the first book in her Malediction series called Stolen Songbird. It's about TROLLS, ya'all. That's a first for me. Kinda intrigued by it.

And that's been my week. Happy National Handwriting Day to you. See you next Friday.