June Highlights

It’s time for my highlights of the middle month of year!

• Reading

Fiction: I thought reading would be slower this month because writing was going swimmingly and taking almost all my time. But I somehow I read 7 books and many were 4-5 stars! (Although I’d started and read most of The One Who Knows Me in May.) One of my favorites this month was Nora’s Gone Off Script which was a quick-paced, humorous, and endearing delight. But the trophy-takers for me were The Protector and The Healer by Dee Henderson. I’d been intrigued by the cover of The Protector for a while and I finally sat to give it a try. I instantly got drawn in by the unorthodox, loving O’Malley family. I love these books so so much, have silently cried through some of them, and recommend!

Bible Reading: I read the books of Luke (which has reallyyyy long verses, like Luke was trying to tell the story of Jesus in one breath!) and Philemon (hehe).

• Writing

I need to quit being so surprised at how quickly the writing of ADOBS 4 is going; I remembered that before I started writing fantasy, I routinely took a month to 5 weeks to write books. My mind is just falling back into that, at least with this book. So, I need to stop getting shocked at the pace. Haha.

In other words, writing is going delightfully! I love this new, water-filled world and bringing it to life. I love discovering facets of the plot beyond the outline, and spending time with my characters, existing and new!

My hopes had been that this first draft for ADOBS 4 would be 100k words tops. But we’re already well past 100k. So this expectation is in the bin. Still hope it won’t be as long as ADOBS 3 at over 200k words hehe…

• Beta Reading

Somehow I was reading, writing, and beta reading all at once this month. I didn’t think I could make it work but I wasn’t ready to forfeit any one for the other, and it somehow worked. It’s been a while since I critiqued/beta read, since I’m now super picky with the MSs I take on, and it was lovely.

• Church

One of my 2024 goals was to be more involved in church activities, and it’s been going well!

We had the Hallelujah Challenge finale and another praise program hosted by our church’s choir. Both involved lots of praising and dancing and fellowshipping. In other words, they were amazing! The choir program had us dancing for 3 hours straight and the energy in church was such that only comes from God’s presence. I’m so thankful I got to participate in both!

Youth Sunday was awesome! It coincided with men’s Father’s Day Sunday and was a fun balance with men and youths hosting different parts of the service. More and more, I’m settling into the youth group and it’s heartwarming. (Although that now means they’re trying to give me more spotlight-y roles that I am so not ready for!)

• Path2pub

After a May break, Path2pub was back in June! I had ideas that were different from agent interviews, and they were fun! One was something I’d started a while ago, which was to gather timely querying advice and encouragement from writers. The other was to gather submissions advice and encouragement from other writers on subs—this especially felt great to do!

I also reached out to more debut authors interested in sharing their publication journey. And these fresh features had me more amped up, after the routine of only formatting agent interviews!

I reached out to more agents for interviews, but the tiring aspect of interviewing industry professionals is that only few keep to time or are responsive. A few times, I have to nudge to finally get the promised response. That aspect isn’t fun and with this batch of interview requests, it’s been more common. But I was able to get a couple of responses on time to make the posts.

I have decided that since I’m the only one running the site for now, I’ll be flexible with the schedule. I normally run a fixed schedule to make sure all contributors also keep to the timing. But until it’s time to reintroduce other contributors, I’ve decided to post as the ideas and opportunities come so I too can feel more flexible!

• Music

Peace by Lionel Peterson has been my go-to music for two months now. The lyrics has been encouraging and steady 🙂

My new favorite podcast is Better Together. I just found out about this lovely podcast, and it has been resonating so much, especially in the waiting season.

• Miscellaneous Events

For Father’s Day, we got a special treat for my dad and he was all smiles. I was glad we did it 🙂

I got my second acknowledgment-section shoutout in a friend’s book (Amber Chen’s Of Jade And Dragon!). And it’s always exciting to see!

My cousin came over to stay with us for a while and initially we were wary of the idea. We haven’t seen this cousin since we were all kids. But so far it’s been going well and I find I like a full-ish house! She even wrote us a cute thanks-for-having-me note after her first week here.

We also got multiple, great news in the family this month. One had my younger sister and I up in the midnight, silent-squealing not to wake my cousin, and hugging each other. God has really been faithful!

I hope your month went great. If not, hold fast! July will be better 🙂