2019 is almost over

Wow, what a year 2019 has been! It's been an odd one for me as I explored new hobbies and continued ones I'd begun a couple of years ago. The biggest thing I noticed throughout the year was that I never seemed to have enough time to do all the things I wanted to do. But then, that's pretty much every year! lol

Looking back on this year, I did manage to get one book published: Peregrinate (Annals of Ellie #3).

This book was a lot of fun to write, but also a challenge since I was writing about a part of the world I've never visited (Australia and New Zealand). But the story was about Ellie more than her surroundings, so it didn't turn out as bad as I was fearing.

Once I got that book published, I turned my focus to the next book in the Galactic Dynasty series that I'm co-authoring with my hubby and muse. We're still working on that manuscript, but I hope to have it published early in the coming year.

For the most part, though, I've been traveling and crafting this year. I'm still working on the afghan that I started a year or so ago as well as a cross-stitch that was also started more than a year ago. I'm steadily working my way through sewing classes and am now in the middle of sewing my first sundress! So excited to see how it turns out! I'll be sure to post pics on here when it's done. I've also crocheted Christmas presents (a slouchy hat and fingerless gloves) for my bestie, completed a paint-by-number for my hubby, and cross-stitched a little tree ornament stocking for my aunt and uncle.

As for traveling, I've been to San Diego and back, taking a month to travel with the hubby in our RV. That was back in January-February timeframe. I've been back and forth to Kentucky several times to visit my bestie. And I've been to Alabama and back to visit my aunt and uncle. There's also been trips to book festivals and a couple of house-hunting trips that ended up telling me that I wanted to stay right where we were instead of moving!

In all, it's been an active year. Not so much on the writing side of the house, but hopefully that will pick up again with the new year. I'm hoping to have the next Galactic Dynasty book out as well as possibly the next Annals of Ellie book out in the coming year, crossing my fingers and toes that my brain can recapture my love of writing that seems to have faded in the last year or so. I also intend to continue my book reviews of books I have on my TBR shelves. You can find a page called TBR Pile on my site which lists all of my books I've yet to read and follow the links to the ones I've already reviewed. 

As for crafting, I plan to hopefully have the afghan crocheted, the cross-stitch done, and my sewing classes completed within the next year. And who knows? There will probably be all kinds of other things I'll be experiencing and crafting and writing throughout the year.

So, no doubt 2020 will be just as busy as this year has been. But I don't think I'd want it any other way. Life is short and I believe that we should try to make the most of it while we can. And since all of these things are activities I love to do, that just makes life all the sweeter!

I hope everyone has an amazing 2020 and have a safe and fun time celebrating the passing of another year!

Booking Through Thursday #2

Booking Through Thursday is a weekly bookish meme about (mostly) books and reading.

This week's BTT is: Vacation

When you travel, do you bring one book with you? Or a pile of them?
And is that pile still a load of paper to lug around? Or do you use an e-book reader like a Kindle or your iPad to help carry the load? (Because, even if you prefer paper, it can get heavy when you're traveling!)

I actually take both when I'm traveling. I'll find a couple of paper books to take with me and I'll also take my Android which has apps for Kindle, Nook, and several other e-readers. Then when I get to where I'm going, it just depends on what kind of mood I'm in as to which I pick up to read, paper or e-book.

Which do you take with you on vacation?

Leave me a link or comment below and have a great Thursday!

The Leaning Tower of Books

I love books!  I've been a voracious reader since I was 9 and was first introduced to The Nancy Drew Casefiles series (I still have 117 books out of this series...just couldn't bare to part with them).  I wanted to be Nancy Drew and travel to all the places she did, solving mysteries and catching the bad guys.  I even remember one time telling my mom to call me Nancy instead of Wendy (I was big into playing Pretend at that age and who better to pretend to be than Nancy Drew?). 

Anyway, as I got older, I slowly branched out into the paranormal realm (vampires and ghosts mainly with the occasional witch thrown in).  And then my last couple of years of high school, I was introduced to Fantasy with Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series.

Then life hit and threw me some major curve balls which caused me to stop reading for quite a while - about 10 years or more, to be honest.  It also caused me to stop writing for the same amount of time.  Some things in life are hard to get past and they tend to take away your enjoyment in things that you once were completely immersed in.

So, with that void of books and writing in my life, I completely lost touch with the literary world and a lot of things had changed (for the better, I believe).  When I was a teen, there wasn't really such a thing as Young Adult books.  Everything was lumped into Children (or if you had a progressive bookstore in your town, they called the section Teens).  But the books at that time were pretty generic and not very mature.  And I was on a very mature reading level back then.  So, most books (with a few rare exceptions) were boring to me and I ended up reading more adult books (Robert Jordan, Dean Koontz, and a freakin' ton of romance novels).

So, imagine my pleasant surprise when the Twilight series and the Harry Potter series came out and I actually picked them up to read.  I couldn't believe how amazingly different these books were from the books I'd read as a kid and as a teen!  These two series alone broke the non-reading spell I was under and over the past few years, I have begun to devour books again like I used to.

The difference this time is that I feel I've truly branched out in my reading interests.  Whereas I typically stuck with mysteries, vampires, ghosts, some fantasy, and a ton of romance (especially Regency Romance), I now find myself reading so many new and intriguing subgenres in both the Young Adult and the Adult realms.  Dystopians, Psychological Thrillers, Zombies, Werewolves, Contemporaries, Historical Fictions.....and the list goes on and on. 

And now there are Indie Authors, Self-Published Authors, and Traditional Authors all turning up the notch and raising the bar for all these different genres.  And with the creation of the ebook, books are so much easier to come by (and relatively cheaper too).  But, I will admit that even though I have almost 400 books on my Kindle and Nook apps combined, I still much prefer to have either paperback or hardback. :)

Which brings me to why I titled this post the way I did: According to my calculations, I currently have almost 300 books on my TBR pile that I actually own but have yet to get around to reading.  I'm working on that pile and trying very hard not to add more to it, but it seems that I have a slight book buying addiction.  Even if I manage to not actually spend money on books, I still find myself occasionally going onto Amazon and finding Free books to download, which then sit on the pile for way longer than they should because really I was just trying appease the urge to own more books.  Sigh.  It's a vicious cycle but one that I am determined to someday break.

And the reason I'm rambling on about all of this is to let you all know that at the end of each month, I'll be posting an update that shows which books I read from the TBR pile that month and what, if any, books got added to the TBR pile.  Maybe someday I'll have the pile completely reduced to 0 but I highly doubt it.  My goal right now is to try and concentrate on some of the books that were added to the pile more than 6 months ago.  We'll see how well that goes. :)

Do you have a Leaning Tower of Books?

If so, how many books make up that Tower and how do you go about reducing the number?

 

I'd love to hear your thoughts and comments, so please feel free to leave me something below and have a wonderful weekend!