I have written the first draft of 2.5 books!

The first one was the 1/2 which just got a little messy and I didn’t enjoy it. It was my first major writing project and I just didn’t organize it well enough. I also grew out of the idea quickly and decided to stop and not waste more time.

My second book I managed to finish at 70k I believe (it’s been a while). Similarly I grew out of the idea by the end and it would have needed major revisions to push through editing.

My third and most recent one I really love, the first draft is complete and I am slowly editing it. Though editing seems to be my weakness it seems because it’s taking far longer than it should. This one I would love to actually clean up and eventually publish but yeah, going to take a while to get there!

I use Scrivener to write in and I highly recommend it! (you can usually find some discount codes for it as well). I like to use it to quickly draft the storyline and then expand each scene as I go. It also has some handy features for organizing research notes and pictures. It’s packed with so many features so it’s a pretty popular writing app among writers in general.

Ahh yes, my poor Whitestar Calathea that gets a spider mite infestation every few months is definitely proof of this. Always the same one. Never anything else around it.

Fancy! This looks like it came from one of those collector edition sites for books! Definitely a pretty piece to put on the shelf.

Yeah, after finishing the Wheel of Time series it felt like I really lost something important and it was so hard to get into other fantasy worlds for a while due to how immersed I was in it for so long.

I read this book recently that fits into the mystery/crime/creepy category: What Lies in the Woods by Kate Alice Marshall

I remember once reading that someone did this for real. And another person would tear their paperback book in half if it was too thick to hold. I was very sad for a while after that.

I read an advanced copy of Horror Movie by Paul Tremblay and it was so good! Really recommend that one when it comes out.

100+ is very impressive! It sounds like you essentially finish a book every 3-4 days to get those numbers. How you keep that up consistently? I feel like I can do that for a month or two and then tend to need a break before picking up more.

I usually set a goal of 24 and generally surpass it every year (at 33 this year so far). I have months where I read a ton and then others where I just don’t even pick up a book due to getting busy. But it’s a solid goal just so I can see how I’m doing that year.

It’s on sale right now on switch (which is where I played the first as well) but not on steam.

I played through Far: Lone Sails and really enjoyed the light puzzle and management of the machine. It was super atmospheric and I really loved the game overall. It was a perfect casual game that really absorbed me into it. Going to play the sequel as well soon.

I do Halloween reads all year! I also just really like horror in general so I tend to pick them up a lot. There are a lot of different subgenres of horror as well so it’s hard to recommend stuff without knowing your specific preferences, but here are some that I’ve read recently and liked.

If you want creepy occult you can try:

• Silver Nitrate by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
• Mister Magic by Kiersten White

If you want creepy atmospheric:

• The Luminous Dead by Caitlin Starling
• The Hollow Places by T Kingfisher

If you want messed up horror:

• Ghost Eaters by Clay McLeod Chapman

If you want classic horror:

• We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson
• The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

I haven’t played Outer Wilds but from what I know of it it should be similar. The Forgotten City is based on real world history though which was pretty interesting and it’s much more compact than what I’ve heard of Outer Wilds. It look me maybe ~7h to finish it fully, but can definitely be done faster too.

What a beautiful overachiever! I wouldn’t even be mad if it didn’t produce any fruit.

I played through The Forgotten City and really liked it! It’s a time looping puzzle game where you have to unravel the mystery of a strange city before every day it collapses into ruin. It really sucked me into the story and I could forgive a bit of the jankiness in the actual gameplay. The characters were all interesting and were very interconnected which made the whole thing feel quite alive. I didn’t love the ending (there are technically multiple but I managed to get the canon one on my play through), it was okay but a little out of nowhere, everything before that was good.

Take a look at Dredge! It’s a creepy horror-ish game where you play as a fishing boat. There are some creepy elements at night but it’s fairly causal overall. I really loved the atmosphere and light story elements as well as the fun fishing games that is the majority of the gameplay.

You can go to second hand bookstores and grab lots of books for a much better price to stock the library with! Also worth keeping a bunch of extras to restock as needed. People are suppose to put stuff back into the libraries but not sure how the take vs. return ratios are.

I live in an apartment so my gardening is limited to containers on my balcony as well as a million tropical houseplants. I finally figured out what grows best in my conditions of scorching hot in the morning and nice and cool in the afternoon out there. I’m growing a fig and a dwarf citrus as well as a blueberry bush that is finally not hating the spot I put it in! Otherwise it’s a bunch of succulents out there.

I’m hoping one day to have a real garden but for now I’m having fun with what I can grow both indoors and outdoors.

An obvious one might be Rand from Wheel of Time series. He is feared/hated by various groups for various reasons. One of the biggest reasons is that he is destined to break the world again. The Aiel especially have a weird relationship with him because of this.

Yup same here. I have an extensive ebook collection that I’ve been putting together for a while. It helps that I only get them while they’re on sale so it’s actually not too bad (I tell myself)! But yes there are a ton of them.

I have a whole list of books waiting for price drops as well that get added to the pile. My general rule is that if it’s <$5 and it’s on the list I get it.