October’s slipped through my fingers and it’s already nearly Bonfire Night as I write this. I love the fireworks but Clara hates them, so she’s safely tucked away at my parents’ house. I always feel unmoored without her. The house is too quiet. The perfect time to write a blog?

October was very, very quiet. I spent most of it writing, but apart from that it was nice to get back to hosting this month after having the house disrupted in September. We hosted our annual Soup Night to great success, though I didn’t get any good pictures! Have these terrible ones instead:

Later in the month we also hosted a movie night Sophie’s birthday party!

WRITING

At the start of October I finally finished third draft edits on Book #1 and sent it to my beta reader for its developmental edit. That’s due back soon, so I can work on those and hopefully put it out on submission at the start of the new year. In the meantime, I finally got cracking on something new: Book #2! I am SO excited about this project, it’s completely different from the first book. From fantasy to… speculative AI satire? Psychological thriller? Not sure yet, I need to finish it. Anyway, I ended up spending most of October locked in my lovely new living room writing the first 40,000 words of my new thing and it was glorious. Ah, shiny-new-thing syndrome. How I love thee. Nothing makes you feel better than the endorphins from getting your teeth into something that sweeps your brain away.

MUSIC

Not new but new-to-me, I got a lot of mileage out of Dog Eared by Billie Marten. A layered album that grows on you with every listen.

GAMES

We did manage to play a lot of games this month. Our highlight has probably been Sanctuary. They’ve taken one of our favourite games, Ark Nova, and made it into its own self-contained tile puzzle, and it’s great. Really good at two. We’ve also enjoyed playing Propolis, a bee-theme worker placement and resource management game.

BOOKS

Read a few good books this month, more than I realised, actually. Cultish was fantastic, and nice to get back into a little more non-fiction between that and some writing books.

And here’s the poem of the month: Manifesto by Kelan Nee.

LOOKING AHEAD

This month I’m dipping my toe back into poetry by taking part in my first ever poetry workshop. It’s called Undo Me or Eat Me by Oluwaseun Olayiwola and I’m really looking forward to it.

That’s all folks!