Happy September, everyone. I’m not sure about all of you but, around here, we’re looking forward to (hopefully) cooler weather, pumpkin spiced everything, and lots of good vibes. But, that’s not what I’m looking at today. Today I’m looking at my August progress and seeing how it’s looking relative to the entire year. 

I had high hopes on January 1st (which seems like a REALLY long time ago) and started with these goals in mind: 

Each month I had to microfocus in order to make progress on this list. In August my goals were:

• Release Darkest Fears
• Mail out the Darkest Fears preorder boxes
• Proofread the YA Contemporary
• Finalize the cover for the YA Contemporary
• Start drafting the Superhero Project (book 1)

So, how did I do?

The short answer is good. 

The longer answer is:

1. Darkest Fears became officially available wherever you buy your books on August 19th (including here). That means everything is checked off on that progress page and this project is officially DONE. What a fun journey! 
2. Preorder boxes went out before that. As far as I know, everyone has already received their box! 

3. Onto the YA Contemporary. Most of the beta feedback is back and that pushed me to jump into a final proofread, checking on some of those changes to make sure they’re in place. I think they are. That’s done, which is nice. I’ll do a LAST and FINAL proof when the author copy is here, but that’s a ways down the road. 
4. Two (very similar) cover options were presented for this one. There was already a pretty solid idea of how I wanted this one to look, so there wasn’t much to decide on. That IS decided but I’ve pushed that release a little. Expect that in a couple weeks. 

5. Finally, I decided to jump into drafting book 1 of the Superhero Project. As I blogged about in August, this is a trilogy. I’m about 20,000 words into the first book and still solidly on outline with this one. I didn’t necessarily plan to dive right into writing this one, but it sort of forced my hand. At least it’s progress!

After all that, here’s what the 2025 Progress looked like at the end of August.

It’s looking GREAT at this point. I did set the goal to create myself 2 new story ideas and I’ve only created 1. Of course, that 1 turned into a trilogy … so I guess I need to decide if I’m going to give myself grace on that one or come up with a second one. That remains to be seen. 

I also need to put some attention on that Romance and get that one fully edited. That’s on the September docket! 

Here’s some fun stats for you related to writing and my projects in August:

• 28,195 words written across all projects and platforms
  • 3,149 of those were book reviews
  • 3,629 were blog posts
  • 938 were dropped into the idea journal
  • That leaves 20,479 on the Superhero Project
• 38 Chapters Edited
  • That’s pretty close to the full count of chapters in the YA Contemporary so that checks out. 

Now, Reading. 

Remember, if you’re looking for the actual reviews those can be found over on alltherightreads.com where I’m a part of the review team. But, here’s the stats for you. 

The Graphic:

I read 11 books in August but only 8 of those were on the official TBR. 

Here’s that quick time out where I explain “official TBR”:

My goal this year was to read all 119 of the books that were on my TBR on January 1. So not just 119 books … those specific 119 books. I am still part of the review team at All the Right Reads. That means I’m taking on 2-3 books per month that I didn’t know anything about on January 1. Basically, this makes things a lot more complicated for me. 
As of the end of August there are 36 of those original TBR books remaining. 
There are also 70 new books on the TBR that do not count toward the challenge. 12 of those are books I have to read/review as part of the All the Right Reads team. That means I have to read 12 books NOT on the official TBR as well as the ones that are. 
I have only myself to blame on this one. 

Anyway, back to the regularly scheduled information. In August I read 11 books or 3,507 pages (about 109 pages per day). 45% of those were independently published. 

The Reading Journal:

The Stats:

Where did I get them all?

• 1 Borrowed from a person or the library (2 borrowed from the library but I also had those  in other formats, so they’re counted as ½ each)
• 3 ARC or Review copies provided by authors or publishers (those are the ones listed at the top of the first page)
• 7 purchased
  • 1 purchased on Kindle
  • 2.5 purchased from my favorite local used bookstore (1 of these was also borrowed in another format, hence the half)
  • 2 purchased online from Biblio
  • 1 purchased directly from the author’s website or from the author at an event
  • 0.5 purchased at Goodwill or another thrift store (also borrowed in another format)

What formats were they all:

• 4.5 ebooks (really 5, I borrowed the ebook from the library but only read half that way)
• 0 audiobooks (There’s a serious lack of available “official TBR” books available on audio, in case you’re wondering why this keeps happening)
• 5.5 paperbacks (you’re getting the ½ concept by now)
• 1 hardcover

Star Ratings:

• 0 1-star books. That makes sense because this is RARE for me. At alltherightreads we say a book has to be one we cannot recommend to get this rating. 
• 1 2-star books. These are books that were problematic, for some reason. The full reviews would lay out why. Safe to say that something about them rubbed me the wrong way. 
• 8 3-star books. This is probably my most common rating. For me, these books are GOOD but they’re NICHE for some reason. I’d have to find out if you were in that particular niche before I’d recommend them to you. Sometimes it’s because of content warnings, sometimes it’s because they’re just for a really specific reader. If you happen to be in this niche, however, these could be your absolute favorite books!
• 2 4-star books. These are books that I’d recommend just based on the fact that you say you read this genre. They’re just GREAT examples of their genre. For this month those were:
  • Night of the Living Toilet Paper is a middle grade science fiction sequel. This duology is great if you like fun, adventurous middle grade stuff. Recommended for classrooms or for younger readers!
  • The Amulet is the conclusion to a YA Fantasy trilogy that’s out of print and hard to find (keeping me from rating it 5 stars). 
• 0 5-star book. These books are ones that CROSS GENRES. I’d recommend them to almost any reader but definitely to readers of at least 2 genres. Crossing genres can be difficult for any author because you have to do both well. There are often months where i don’t encounter any of those. August was one such month. 

So, that’s August. 

TLDR: Hit all of the goals and stayed on track for a productive 2025. 

See you again soon!