Tuesday. Getting through.

 Tuesday. Receptionist out. I don't have time today to post. Sorry!

 

 Tonight, writing, reading, taking care of Ryker and Steve. Bed.

 Have a good day

 

Much love,

PK the Bookeemonster 

The weekend is over, sir

 Monday

I had a mini-reading slump this weekend. The books I had started were feeling stale. 

 

 I've been reading how-to-write books and I'm wondering if that is affecting my enjoyment at the moment. Definitely in the Nora Roberts romance I was reading. It was pretty dated/bad. I hate "insta-love" stories. I DNF'd it.

 

But I'm really liking what I'm learning - or re-learning in some cases. Every day I'm making progress on my 100 Day Project. Today is

 

 My biggest focus is on writing scenes. Those are the building blocks. Characters are coming along. 

I did read a short story yesterday to try to get my reading mojo back.

 

 HOME: HABITAT, RANGE, NICHE, TERRITORY by Martha Wells. A part of the Murderbot series.

 

Occurs just after the fourth novella, Exit Strategy, and told from the point of view of Dr. Mensah. Murderbot is now in the Preservation System with Dr. Ayda Mensah, the closest person to a friend it has, and Murderbot has come a long way to even consider being friends with someone. Mensah is struggling with PTSD in the aftermath of being kidnapped in Exit Strategy, but she's assiduously hiding her personal trauma from everyone around her. The rest of Preservation is struggling with the problem of having a highly dangerous Security Unit on their peaceful planet (the words "killing machine" are thought, if not said).

 Published 2020; 20 pages. There are some authors whose writing soothes my brain. These books and Alice Sabo's Haroon fantasies are a couple of them. They get me back on track.

I didn't go to the coffee shop on Saturday. I probably should have because I'm told Patt was there after not attending for several months due to election (she's a tabulator) and a family health situation. But I was very tired.

 

 I won't be going to the coffee shop on Wednesday because the receptionist is having surgery tomorrow and will be recovering again. Maybe this coming Saturday.

I did start to read DOUBT by Jenny Schwartz. 2nd of 5 in the Adventures of a Xeno-Archeologist series, Sci fi.

Nora Devi intended to leave her old life behind. But when a quick detour to acquire the funds for a new identity goes awry, she finds herself plunged ever deeper into the troubles she hoped to avoid. The Human Sector is a stash of fuel cells just waiting for a spark to explode. The Great Game of politics and power has shifted from the inner realm to the border. Captain Liam Kimani of the battlecruiser RC Genghis Khan is the man in position to suppress the explosion - or ride the wave of it. It's been half a millennium since the Stranding. Is the power of the royals still worth supporting, or is it time to risk everything for the chance to rejoin the rest of humanity?

Published 2021; 233 pages. I read the first one last month and it really surprised me with how good it was considering I'd not heard of the author previously. I'd been looking forward to reading this one but I kept putting it off because of scavenger hunts and readathons.

 Tonight I have a reading sprint starting at 5. I'll tune in after 5:30-ish.

Have a good day

 

Much love,

PK the Bookeemonster

TGIF

 Friday

 

I read last night for the last hour of sprinting. I got to 47% of the Robin Hobb fantasy. So almost half way of the 648-page book.

 

 Day three of The 100 Day Project.

 

Just the beginning of course but I've been able to write both days at lunch. I start with the writing assignment in the book I'm following, which then sparks some ideas for the story I'm attempting. I just keep writing for an hour. I'm not going to fight the ideas. Everything helps.

 

 I haven't decided whether to go to the coffee shop tomorrow. The weather is supposed to be balmy but I also just want to stay home and recover/relax/refresh.

 

 I have another YouTube Saturday reading sprint tomorrow afternoon. No scavenger hunt attached. If I go to the coffee shop, I'll probably write then for my Day 4 stuff and work on my reading journal.

 Tonight and tomorrow night we have On Patrol to watch. That's about it. Nap, read, write, bullet journal, clean-ish, hang with Ryker. 

 Have a good weekend

 Much love

PK the Bookeemonster 

Now weekend.

 Thursday. 

The receptionist has been working every day this week for about five hours and then goes home in the afternoon after my lunchtime. Today she called in. We'll see if she shows up for the afternoon.

 

 I'm hoping she does come in so I can take the hour so I can write for my Day Two of The 100 Day Project. I did good yesterday in writing. 

 

 

If she doesn't come in, I'll have to write this evening. Either way, it will happen.

 

 I had the live last night - I won a necklace that will be shipped in my next purchase, maybe next week. I tried reading some fiction but it wasn't hitting me right - I guess I was in a "serious" mood. So I read a little nonfiction. Another book I've started -- as kind of research -- is JOSEPH ANTON by Salman Rushdie. Memoir.

 

 On February 14, 1989, Valentine’s Day, Salman Rushdie received a telephone call from a BBC journalist who told the author that he had been “sentenced to death” by the Ayatollah Khomeini. It was the first time Rushdie heard the word fatwa. His crime? To have written a novel called The Satanic Verses, which was accused of being “against Islam, the Prophet, and the Quran.” So begins the extraordinary story of how a writer was forced underground, moving from house to house, with the constant presence of an armed police protection team. Rushdie was asked to choose an alias that the police could call him by. He thought of writers he loved and various combinations of their names. Then it came to him: Conrad and Chekhov—Joseph Anton. How do a writer and his family live with the threat of murder for more than nine years? How does he go on working? How does he fall in and out of love? How does despair shape his thoughts and actions, and how does he learn to fight back? In this remarkable memoir, Rushdie tells that story for the first time; the story of the crucial battle for freedom of speech. He shares the sometimes grim, sometimes comic realities of living with armed policemen, and the close bonds he formed with his protectors; of his struggle for support and understanding from governments, intelligence chiefs, publishers, journalists, and fellow writers; and of how he regained his freedom.

Published 2012; 636 pages.

 BattleBots is on tonight but I probably won't watch. Read, maybe write, go to bed for tomorrow is Friday.

Have a good day

 Much love,

PK the Bookeemonster

I'm not going out there

 Wednesday. Winter is back. Very very cold.

 

 I didn't win anything in the ticket draw last night.

 Not at all. Per usual. Tonight I have another live YouTube drawing to watch for purchasing jewelry rather than beads from that shop in the last month and not as many people do so therefore my odds are better.

 

 Today is the first day of Lent. I'll be participating in the 40 days of prayer on Hallow dot com. It's technically a Catholic website but that doesn't really matter, I think it's a nice thing to do.

  

Today is also Day One of The 100 Day Project.

My intention/goal is to create a writing habit following this book:

 

This inspiring guide will be your push, your deadline, and your spark to finally, without excuses, and in three short months, nail that first draft of your novel. The difference between wanna-be writers and real writers is the difference between talk and work. If you commit to the schedule and the techniques within 90 Days to Your Novel and invest two to three hours a day for twelve weeks, you will complete your book. An outline will appear. Characters will take shape. A plot will emerge. Scenes will come together and form a story worth reading. And then the talking can begin!

 Published 2010; 288 pages.

I've brought my tablet with keyboard to work with me so I can set aside time at lunch. I'm hoping I can still keep the evenings mostly for reading. I don't want to give that up at this point.

Stay warm and safe out there.

Have a good day

Much love,

PK the Bookeemonster

Mood: Fifty-fifty

 Tuesday

 

I didn't read last night. I truly meant to, even though online sprints were canceled. There is a young couple on YouTube that I follow who react to music and musics for the first time. Movies are Mondays and Fridays. They've been watching the Harry Potter franchise. Last night, they reacted to the second to the last movie, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows Part 1. They are cute reacting to they watch. And then I watched a couple sisters on YouTube who react to movies as well and last night was the original Footloose. 

 

 And there went the evening because I got too tired to read after that. But here are the books I'm contemplating to jump my current queue because they're from the library.

 THIS WOVEN KINGDOM by Tahereh Mafi. 1st of 2 so far in fantasy series.

 

 To all the world, Alizeh is a disposable servant, not the long-lost heir to an ancient Jinn kingdom forced to hide in plain sight. The crown prince, Kamran, has heard the prophecies foretelling the death of his king. But he could never have imagined that the servant girl with the strange eyes, the girl he can’t put out of his mind, would one day soon uproot his kingdom—and the world.

Published 2022; 500 pages. 

And THE ROCKY ROAD TO RUIN by Meri Allen. 1st of 3 in The Ice Cream Shop Mystery series, featuring Riley Rhodes, travel food blogger and librarian at the CIA in Connecticut. 

 

 Riley Rhodes, travel food blogger and librarian at the CIA, makes a bittersweet return to her childhood home of Penniman, Connecticut – land of dairy farms and covered bridges - for a funeral. Despite the circumstances, Riley’s trip home is sprinkled with reunions with old friends, visits to her father’s cozy bookshop on the town green, and joyful hours behind the counter at the beloved Udderly Delicious Ice Cream Shop. It feels like a time to help her friend Caroline rebuild after her mother’s death, and for Riley to do a bit of her own reflecting after a botched undercover mission in Italy. After all, it’s always good to be home. But Caroline and her brother Mike have to decide what to do with the assets they’ve inherited – the ice cream shop as well as the farm they grew up on – and they’ve never seen eye to eye. Trouble begins to swirl as Riley is spooked by reports of a stranger camping behind the farm and by the odd behavior of the shop’s mascot, Caroline’s snooty Persian, Sprinkles. When Mike turns up dead in the barn the morning after the funeral, the peace and quiet of Penniman seems upended for good. Can Riley find the killer before another body gets scooped?

Published 2021; 330 pages. 

And there is MALICE, which I already have as a physical book from B&N so I may let this one go back for a while. It's just convenient to have the ebook also for sleeping in bed reading. 

Tonight, I have a live stream on YouTube of Randee's (Thunderhorse Descendent shop/Found objects lady) monthly ticket prizes give away at 7pm. But I'm also going to try to get some good reading in. 

 Have a good day

 

Much love,

PK the Bookeemonster