Good Morning Blogosphere!

How the heck are ya? Good I hope! It’s that time of the week to go over interesting little tidbits in all things Jaunts & Haunts, so I hope you’re ready!

Personally, I’ve been out most of the week on a writer’s retreat to Branson. I won’t go over the details too much in this post outside of my progress, but if you’d like, you can check out my lowdown here.

I got back to business as usual on Friday, and there’s a lot of changes at work, many that I don’t like right now, but I’m kind of leery of change. Hoping things aren’t as awful as they seem and crossing my fingers.

This weekend I simply stayed at home and caught up on some reading and posts, hoping to have some exciting stuff next week as well.

All right, let’s get this thing started.

Books

On the bookish side of things, I’ve been a busy man this week!

I finished reading Station Eleven by by Emily St. John Mandel, St. Isabelle’s Downfall by Tiffany Renee Harmon (not an official cover photo below), Animorphs #12, The Reaction by KA Applegate, and Shaman by Jodin Abacus.

Station Eleven was a surprisingly good novel in the apocalyptic genre. It was a good, slow burn with a tasteful amount of thrills and great, well developed characters. For my review of this novel, click here.

St. Isabelle’s Downfall is actually a short story, and I haven’t quite written my review yet because I’m pairing it with an author interview. Keep your eyes peeled on these items next week!

Animorphs #12 wasn’t honestly the best installment in the Animorphs series, but I still had a bunch of fun and can’t wait to continue the series. If you’d like to check my review of this novel, click here.

Shaman is yet another short story, but I didn’t have the best experience reading it. I feel like another round of editing or two might be best for this one. Still, it was an intriguing concept and I still had fun reading. If you’d like to check out my review, click here.

TV/Movies

On the watching side of things, I actually don’t have anything to share with you just yet for this week. While I was on my writer’s retreat I did watch some great things, but I am currently working on the blog post review for it.

Like the short story review, keep your eyes peeled for some great stuff next week!

My Writing

On the writing side of things, this week has been great! I went on my writer’s retreat to Branson and got some things done.

In total, I wrote 4,616 words (about 18 and a half pages) in just three days. This included my current chapters 17 and 18, as well as the beginning to chapter 19. I also began plotting out the remainder of chapter 19 in some detail this weekend. 

My total word count for my sequel is just under 50,000 words, right about 200 pages at this point.

My next steps will be to plot out the next few chapters until I feel comfortable writing them. I’m right in the middle of my second act, and shockingly still have at least ten more chapters to go (some of my initial chapters plotwise turned out to be two, and in some cases, three). I have everything summed up, but I still need to get more detail in there as well as some explanations.

On another writing note, my local library agreed to buy a copy of my book Reaper! I was so ecstatic, and I’m super grateful. In the near future, I’ll be reaching out to other local libraries and trying to see if they’ll hold my book. I’m super hopeful and crossing my fingers.

That’s a Wrap!

All right, so that was it for my week. How did yours go? Did you do well on your writing and reading projects? Anything interesting you’d like to share?

Do you have any great recommendations in TV, movies, or books? Feel free to share in the comments!

Thanks for stopping by everyone, and Happy Sunday!

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