Hello! Another month is done, and it’s time for the monthly wrap-up! It’s the last month of the year too.
Books Read:
I finished my Goodreads goal! Yes! I actually went several books beyond that.
Goodreads tracks these audio/video classes I’ve been taking by The Great Courses, in addition to audiobooks and print books. It feels like cheating to count them, even though I often listen to them on my walks in lieu of listening to an audiobook. But going over My Year in Books, I still would have reached my Goodreads goal even without them. I don’t list them here (although maybe I should… I’ll start next month). I’m setting my Goodreads goal for 2021 assuming that I’m including them. Although I’m keeping my goal the same. I don’t want the Goodreads goal to be stressful.
Anyway, I read 12 books this month (not counting audio/video courses). This was the most of any month this year!
- A Sky Beyond the Storm – Sabaa Tahir
- Fireblood – Elly Blake
- The Promised Neverland Volume 1
- The Heavenly Man – Brother Yun (reread)
- Starfish – Akemi Dawn Bowman
- Enchantée – Gita Trelease (reread)
- A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
- Golden Poppies – Laila Ibrahim
- The Language of Thorns – Leigh Bardugo
- Everything That Burns – Gita Trelease
- Clockwork Angel – Cassandra Clare (reread)
- The Promised Neverland Volume 2
I finished the last three books on December 31st, but they were all partially read. My dh was like “uh, we were planning on doing family stuff tonight” and I was like “not until 8!” And I managed to finish them all before then.
Writing:
Last month, I wrote two Shadowhunter’s fanfics: “A Walk in the Snow,” which takes place on Christmas Eve, and “The End of a Marriage Blanc.” They’re both post-Chain of Gold Jordelia fics. I probably should be finishing my NaNo20 duology, but I didn’t.
I sent my first queries!
I already know what I’m going to write for NaNo21 though. When I was in high school, I wrote a best-friends-to-lovers story called Save the Best for Last. Even though I haven’t seen the story since high school, and don’t know where it is, I’m going to rewrite it. Obviously, it’s going to be a lot different, especially since the original was a self-insert rpf. This one is going to take place in The Brightness of Shadow universe, 6000 years before that story takes place.
Originally, I was going to write a story about the evil queen Katerina and her daughter Elena for NaNoWriMo in 2018. In August, something told me “Don’t write that story yet. Turn that fanfic you wrote in April into a story about elves and humans.” So I did. Later, I found out that Katerina and Elena were in the same universe, just ~6000 years before The Brightness of Shadow.
Save the Best for Last is going to take place a few years before Katerina and Elena’s story. What I think is the coolest part, though, is that I’m discovering more about how the elves came to take over Erenya while I’m thinking about Save the Best for Last. Had I written Katerina and Elena’s story first, I would have made a mess of things. Some of the events that take place in Save the Best for Last will affect both my rewrites of The Brightness of Shadow and my unwritten story of Elena and Katerina. The characters in Save the Best for Last (I don’t know their names yet) aren’t politically important (they’re just simple villagers) but the times they live in will be important for the other stories.
Life:
My dh got a job! His new boss definitely needed an HR manager. My dh is already making improvements, and has ideas to help increase its rating on Yelp and reduce turnover.
We finished school for the year and have been off for a couple weeks. So nice having a vacation. But we start again on Monday. Homeschool coop doesn’t start again till later in January though. I don’t know if I’ll end up with enough students to teach the German class again, but I’ll probably teach the second semester of the Spanish class.
For Christmas, I ended up finishing FOUR scarves. One, for my sister-in-law, was almost done, and I just finished it. Then I made a maroon one for my daughter. Then I designed one with Seahawks colors for my brother. Finally, on December 21st, my dh was like “we need to spend my paycheck this week on the mortgage. We don’t have any money for Christmas.” Uh… so that night, I started making a scarf for him. I only worked on it while he was at work, and I finished it two hours before he came home on Christmas Eve (we eventually got a mortgage forbearance and were able to get a few Christmas presents).
2020 decided to give us one last gift. On December 29th, my dh blew a tire by running over something that was covered with snow. We didn’t have enough money in our bank account. So I went to my boy and told him “we have an emergency, we need to borrow your money!” With his help, we managed to scape together $188, which was $2 more than the final bill.
And I think the motor in our heater blower isn’t working (my dh doesn’t think so, but I believe he’s mistaken). So I’m looking forward to the coronabucks we’re getting on Monday. We’ll finally be able to get our 2nd car up and running again too! We stopped using it last April after my dh lost his job; we didn’t need it, and one of the windshield wipers is broken. Now that he’s working again, we can get it registered and insured and start using it again.
So that was December! How was your month? Did 2020 leave you with any parting gifts? Are you glad it’s 2021?