What Happened to September? (September Book Wrap-Up)

I swear I blinked and September was over. I was so excited for it to get here because it means fall and cooler weather and cozy days indoors with hot chocolate, but it all happened too fast, and now we're entering October! Yikes! I feel like I didn't get a lot done this month, but looking back on it now I think I did all right. This always seems to be the time of year where I start to lag a little bit in terms of both reading and writing. Compared to last year at this time I'm definitely ahead of the game.

Writing
In lieu of working on Follow the Raven, I've begun planning for NaNoWriMo 2017! September and October are both prep months for the main event in November, and I spent most if it initially listing stories I was interested in, then narrowing down my choices to six, then to three, and finally choosing the one I think I'm going to stick with. The working title for it is Star Island. I'll tell you more as I develop and plan more. I think it goes without saying that I'm very excited for this year's NaNo!

Alas, "Everything Changes" over on Wattpad has come to a close. Yesterday I released the final chapter and epilogue of the story, which were both received extremely well. My readers are excited for the next book (which I'll be releasing in November), and I'm excited to finally get into the more action-packed parts of Kay's newest adventure. (And don't worry - I have a plan for balancing both this story and my actual novel in November. I've thought ahead.) My stats for this story have currently rested at 2,821 reads; 224 votes; and 62 comments.

Reading
I feel like this was a slow reading month for me. I didn't get as much reading done as I would have liked, but the books that I did read were all very good in their own ways.

• Mortal Coil by Derek Landy
• The Love Interest by Cale Dietrich
• Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones
• The Siren by Kiera Cass

It took me the entire month of September to finish Mortal Coil, which is the fifth book in the Skulduggery Pleasant series. I can't even really explain why. I think it was a combination of it being just shy of 600 pages and the fact that I had fairly flown through the first four books to get to that one. Either way I think I've reached some sort of Skulduggery Pleasant burnout (even though I would never have thought it possible) and I've decided to revise my initial goal of reading the entire series by the end of the year. At this point I'd like to at least finish book six, which will be the end of the second arc in the series. I feel like that's much more manageable and less stressful at this point in time, and in a way I'll still be completing some part of the series, at least.

With all of that said, I enjoyed Mortal Coil. It was much darker than the rest of the books before it, but I liked it more because of that. Valkyrie had a lot of character development in this one, and the primary threat was much bigger and more dangerous than ever before as the book neared its end. I'm really intrigued by the concept of the Death Bringer and I'm curious to see how Valkyrie is going to handle it all.

The Love Interest is a book that I added to my WTR the instant I saw it on Goodreads back in April. Then, while on vacation in the Yellowstone area, I saw it sitting on the shelf at the town's public library and I was like, "Heck yeah, I'm getting that!" So I checked it out while on vacation and then brought it home with me to read, since it was from another library in the state and I was allowed to do that. It was everything I hoped it would be and more. I loved the unique - very unique - spin on the classic love triangle story and the fact that it was told from the perspective of one of the guys instead of the girl. I felt like I was being introduced to the love triangle trope for the first time, in a way. I absolutely loved it and I'm so on board with whatever this author comes up with next.

Howl's Moving Castle and The Siren were both books that were a) from my TBR and b) audiobooks I listened to this month. I had watched the movie Howl's Moving Castle as a kid but never really understood what was going on. My roommate in college and now best friend is a huge anime fan and so when she and I saw the book sitting on the shelf at Hastings before it closed down, I gave it a second look and she convinced me to buy it. I put off reading it for a while, but when I finally did I couldn't get enough of it. Oh my goodness this book was so amazing. I loved absolutely everything about it, and the narrator was fantastic! I love Howl and Sophie so much, and now that I've listened to the book I want to try and find the movie to watch again so I can compare the two and see if I understand it any better now that I'm older and have read the book it was based on.

Earlier this year I read the first three books of The Selection series by Kiera Cass and absolutely loved them. They were amazing in all the right ways. So when I saw The Siren sitting on the shelf at a little bookstore in the Yellowstone area, it only took a moment for me to decide I wanted it. I not only loved the audiobook version of this novel (with yet another fantastic narrator), I completely fell in love with the entire story because of how incredibly unique and pure it was, just as The Selection series had been. To date I've rated every book I've ever read from Kiera Cass four stars, and I think she's quickly becoming a new favorite author for me. (Plus I just recently found out that she's a woman of the faith in a mainstream publishing world, which is absolute goals, so I admire her doubly for that.) I fully intend to read the rest of The Selection series (with America's daughter) as soon as I can, and I'm super excited to see what Kiera Cass comes up with next.

That's all I have for September, but I have big reading (and writing) plans for October! I have no idea if anyone besides myself and my bookworm friend Kailey will even be interested in doing this, but I've officially decided to host my first readathon! I initially was going to call it Halloreadathon, but as it turns out, that's already been taken. So I'll have to come up with a new name. The readathon will take place from October 23-29, and there are three challenges that go along with it. The overall goal is to read a bunch of horror novels (in the spirit of Halloween) and to get those last minute books in before the craziness of NaNoWriMo starts in November. I'll be posting a full, in-depth overview of this readathon here on Endless Possibilities very soon, but in the meantime if you're interested in joining feel free to let me know! (I may or may not be stating a Goodreads Group for it. We'll see.)

Anyway, that's all she wrote, folks! See you in October! :D