I have written the first draft of 2.5 books!

The first one was the 1/2 which just got a little messy and I didn’t enjoy it. It was my first major writing project and I just didn’t organize it well enough. I also grew out of the idea quickly and decided to stop and not waste more time.

My second book I managed to finish at 70k I believe (it’s been a while). Similarly I grew out of the idea by the end and it would have needed major revisions to push through editing.

My third and most recent one I really love, the first draft is complete and I am slowly editing it. Though editing seems to be my weakness it seems because it’s taking far longer than it should. This one I would love to actually clean up and eventually publish but yeah, going to take a while to get there!

I use Scrivener to write in and I highly recommend it! (you can usually find some discount codes for it as well). I like to use it to quickly draft the storyline and then expand each scene as I go. It also has some handy features for organizing research notes and pictures. It’s packed with so many features so it’s a pretty popular writing app among writers in general.

You can always freeze/can them for later use!

Fancy! This looks like it came from one of those collector edition sites for books! Definitely a pretty piece to put on the shelf.

You can try 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton! I really liked that one. It’s more Groundhog Day but with a bit of a twist on each iteration if that makes sense. I don’t want to spoil too much but it was a wild ride putting things together.

Yeah, after finishing the Wheel of Time series it felt like I really lost something important and it was so hard to get into other fantasy worlds for a while due to how immersed I was in it for so long.

I read this book recently that fits into the mystery/crime/creepy category: What Lies in the Woods by Kate Alice Marshall

Oh this sounds pretty good! Gives me the Murder on the Orient Express vibes with the setup so wouldn’t be surprised if that was the general inspiration for it. But I am interested to read it myself now.

I remember once reading that someone did this for real. And another person would tear their paperback book in half if it was too thick to hold. I was very sad for a while after that.

I read an advanced copy of Horror Movie by Paul Tremblay and it was so good! Really recommend that one when it comes out.

The article just feels all weird. I’m not sure why there is such a strong push for/against keeping track of the books you read. It’s just a statistic like any other. Some enjoy it and others don’t, but it feels like each group is trying to convince the other they’re wrong for no real reason.

I personally keep track of books on Goodreads and write reviews for every one. I forget things and writing my thoughts down works for me, and it’s kinda neat to see the books I’ve read that year.

100+ is very impressive! It sounds like you essentially finish a book every 3-4 days to get those numbers. How you keep that up consistently? I feel like I can do that for a month or two and then tend to need a break before picking up more.

I usually set a goal of 24 and generally surpass it every year (at 33 this year so far). I have months where I read a ton and then others where I just don’t even pick up a book due to getting busy. But it’s a solid goal just so I can see how I’m doing that year.

The show is why I picked it up actually, except I wanted to read it first before watching. I did the same with The Haunting of Hill House and The Turn of the Screw (Haunting of Bly Manor, also still need to watch that one). I tend to enjoy the original books more anyways.

I’ve been reading through a short story collection of Edgar Allan Poe and really liking it. The variety of genres he wrote in is really impressive and I can definitely see how a lot of later novels were inspired by his works! I also never knew just how old they were (1800s!).

I do Halloween reads all year! I also just really like horror in general so I tend to pick them up a lot. There are a lot of different subgenres of horror as well so it’s hard to recommend stuff without knowing your specific preferences, but here are some that I’ve read recently and liked.

If you want creepy occult you can try:

• Silver Nitrate by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
• Mister Magic by Kiersten White

If you want creepy atmospheric:

• The Luminous Dead by Caitlin Starling
• The Hollow Places by T Kingfisher

If you want messed up horror:

• Ghost Eaters by Clay McLeod Chapman

If you want classic horror:

• We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson
• The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

I started reading Dragonfired by J. Zachary Pike, which is the last of The Dark Profit Saga trilogy. The series is a pretty funny satire of the financial and stock markets placed into a standard fantasy world and it’s been executed quite well. The first book (Orconomics) was definitely the best in the series but I am glad to have the final conclusion after many years. I’ve only made it about 1/4 way in so far in the last book but it feels very on par with the rest so far.

You can go to second hand bookstores and grab lots of books for a much better price to stock the library with! Also worth keeping a bunch of extras to restock as needed. People are suppose to put stuff back into the libraries but not sure how the take vs. return ratios are.

Yeah I am not a fan either. I did find that if you filter out YA in general that gets rid of a huge portion of these romance masquerading as fantasy novels. It seems to be super prevalent there. But now YA is bleeding into adult fantasy as well and for that I end up having to read reviews to see if anyone specifically mentioned it.