Has 8 months of the year really gone already?

It seems so.

The heat of the summer, and the craziness that went along with it, has pretty much ended on my end. Things have settled back into a more of a routine, much to my relief.

By the way....what has happened this month?




1. We had a huge alpha session in the beginning of the month, in which MK and I shared our current drafts with each other and Lia. Which we then proceeded to tear apart and flail over.

2. The White Rose gained a few more thousand words, it's now up to 47k words. I'm right about 17k words away from the beta call, which is super exciting!

3. I rescued Jane Eyre from the donate pile. As we were cleaning out some of the books, some of the school reads got relegated to the Purple Heart bag. While I didn't care for Animal Farm or Tuck Everlasting, Jane Eyre didn't deserve that fate. So, it's now sitting on my shelves. Oh and I did also rescue my copy of The Secret Garden, which my mother snitched for school and never gave back.

4. During our vacation downtime, we watched Perry Mason re-runs on the TV. I mean, there really wasn't much better on (except for Alaska State Troopers and Phillies Baseball).

5. I have a new fandom: Phillies Baseball. We never really followed baseball closely before this season, other than the occasional check in. This season, we're actually doing pretty decent! And so, we're now checking game recaps nearly every single day, LOL.




For Working by Candlelight, I wrote 2 posts: In the Kitchen: Scallopy Crisp Apple Pie, and Operation Vintage Makeover: Setting to the Room to Rights.

For The Rebelling Muse, I wrote 2 posts: End of Camp NaNoWriMo, July 2019, and It's So Classic Blog Tag.

For Rebellious Writing, I participated in the It's So Classic Blog Tag for the anniversary blog party we're hosting.

I'm still on hiatus for Maidens for Mary, and I'm holding off until September before getting back into it. It really depends on the employment situation.




1. Work towards the 30K goal of additions for The White Rose.

I'm now gotten about 13k of those 30k words written, so it's a pretty decent chunk!

2. Update TWR's section of Project Blueprint

Now that some of the additions have been added, there are now new characters and some new info about various aspects of the novel. And, there is a lot of world-building that needs to be filled in. Unfortunately, this didn't really happen this month.

Now to check the yearly goals....

1. Finish The White Rose - and have it ready for betas by May at the earliest.

The White Rose gained a few more thousand words, it's now up to 47k words. I'm right about 17k words away from the beta call, which is super exciting!

At the same time, I've been editing some of the old chapters to account for some of the new material. So even though I'm pretty sure that not all the scenes will be written before the 65k threshold, it will not be a totally raw draft. 

3. Get more print books.

I got 2 more print books from my parent's collection, and I bought another non-fiction book for research purposes. I've already had to rearrange the bookshelves at least twice since I got them *sigh* 

Well now that August is over (almost), what is on the docket for September?

September Goals:

1. Finish the additions for TWR.

I am so SO motivated to get this thing finished finally!!!

2. Start researching building the author platform.

Now that TWR is growing up and I've gotten more comfortable with sharing stuff, I'm now starting to think about possibly getting a good "author photo" taken. And while I'm doing that, I want to see how to really establish my "identity" (i.e. researching legal uses of the pen name in contracts and post office, etc.).

3. Record more vlogs with Lia, and edit them. 

Because we've enjoyed our last vlog so much, Lia and I are planning to record another set of vlogs while I visit her in a few days. Don't worry, these will be shortened to about 15 minutes each instead of the 2 hour monster we recorded the last time.



Even though I am not going back to school, I look forward to fall. We were blessed with a spring this year, and to have a fall along with it will be wonderful :)

How about you, dear readers? What has been going on in your corner of the world? 

Scribbingly yours,

Catherine