Hello! We’re right on the cusp of my favorite time of year: autumn! The leaves are slowly changing, the temperatures are mercifully starting to lower (though they’re holding on to summer as best as they can), and there’s a bit of magic in the air. Maybe that’s pumpkin spice, who can say.
This summer was an absolute rollercoaster. I spent a week in Los Angeles in June, a week in Belgium in July, a week in Germany in August, adopted an adorable golden retriever puppy, and somehow managed to write Project Drake’s first draft in only 18 days, with daily vlogs to TikTok as I progressed. My body is BEAT, but I’m very grateful that my chronic pain has been responding well to new medicine since I began that in May. Otherwise, I’m pretty sure this summer would have been impossible.
I still have a few trips through the rest of the year, but they’re shorter, and a couple of them won’t be for work, whereas all of my summer travel was for work. I don’t mean to complain; I absolutely love to travel, but it wears on my body, especially when it’s so much in a short time span and has a big timezone jump. So while I’m still traveling this autumn, I’m looking forward to a bit more rest, baking autumn recipes, and spending time with this sweet puppy. I can’t express how cute he is!
On the bookish front, I’ve set Project Drake aside for a bit and am focusing my attention back on Project Midnight, which, fingers crossed, will be ready to go on sub later this fall. I’m also working on a secret thing that I’ll talk about at some point, but I’m not sure how much I can say about that one yet. I’m *hoping* to have that one finalized fairly quickly, but I’m listening to my body and mind more, and Project Midnight takes priority this fall. Depending on how both those projects go, I may swing back to Project Drake later this year (like, December-late), but I’m mostly expecting to tackle it again in January.
This is the first time I’ve worked on several bookish projects at once, and it’s taken a bit of adjustment for my brain to switch between them. They’re all in very different stages of completion, which helps separate my brain a little, but I’ll admit that I’ve accidently used the wrong names in one manuscript while editing another and had to go back and fix it!
As for other things this fall, I’m immensely excited to dive into fun autumn crafts, recipes, movies, and books. I’m a huge mood reader, so you can bet my reading list is about to take a dramatic turn for the autumn aesthetic and spooky season. I’ll admit I jumped into reading the glorious Leigh Bardugo’s Hell Bent in July because I was desperate for cooler temps and spooky season, and I loved it more than I even thought I would. Oculus, at your service.
I also caught up on a few books that have been on my reading list for a long time (don’t judge me), including Renee Ahdieh’s Flame in the Mist, Marie Lu’s Skyhunter, Rory Power’s Wilder Girls, and Stephanie Garber’s Legendary. I’m also finally reading Victoria Aveyard’s Red Queen, and I’m re-reading Sarah J. Maas’s A Court of Mist and Fury (which I was reading last fall and then put down because life and mood reading-ness struck). In May, I read the entire Stalking Jack the Ripper series and am now a big Kerri Maniscalco fan!
Now as I switch to my autumn reading list, I’m excited to tackle a few new books as well as others from my reading list. A few I’m eyeing next are Kelly Andrew’s The Whispering Dark, Erin A. Craig’s House of Salt and Sorrows, and Karen McManus’s Nothing More to Tell. I’m eager to see what else catches my eye as autumn fully sets in.
Whatever’s on your upcoming schedule, I hope you’re taking time for yourself! And if you read a book you loved, I want to hear it!
Sending pumpkin spice,
Valerie
Initial photo from Pexels, rest taken by me
valerie c. norton 