September – All Wrapped Up

• 

• 

• 

• 

So, September has whooshed by and we’re into October. The weather is getting warmer and we’ve already had our first downpours for the season. It’s school holidays so the beach is mobbed and this weekend is a long weekend – Queen’s Birthday (and yes, I know the rest of Australia celebrates that event closer to her actual birthday).

The AFL wrapped up last weekend, the NRL Grand Final is this weekend, so that’s the end of the football for another year. This weekend states other than us and WA will switch to daylight savings – all of which means one thing: summer is almost here.

Okay, without further havering (I love that word) or waffle, let’s wrap up September!

The weather

Mostly blue – except for Sydney, which was pretty manky for most of the time I was there.

Travel

Where do I start?

We spent a long weekend in Agnes Water, and I had almost 2 weeks in Sydney for the day job to assist with the office relocation. I’ll let you guess which one was the most fun.

Catch-ups

Sydney always means catch-ups and this time around although I was there to work – and work I did, I was in town for my niece’s 21^st party, caught up with some friends and got to bask in the very special attention that goes along with an outing with Teddy Roosevelt and Sammie from The Annoyed Thyroid.

We always talk non-stop and invariably run out of time before we run out of words. Sadly, on this particular Saturday, I had to go into the office and unpack boxes, so we weren’t able to indulge in any dumplings… something I made up for on other days this trip. This Sydney trip had a very high DC (dumpling count).

Finally, my sister made it up to the Sunshine Coast for a visit – rounding off a very social month indeed.

Instagram

The pics with the most engagement for September were this one…

and this one…

Excess Baggage update

I’m finishing the month 1kg lighter than I started it. I finally reached my 5kg milestone – man, that’s been slow… yeah, I think the previous weeks dumpling count could have more than a little to do with that! Plus, I smashed my step target to pieces. For the third month in a row I exceeded 10,000 steps a day. In September I walked a total of 386,000 steps.

Something I’ve never done before

The Smash Pit. Oh my goodness this was more fun than you can imagine.

I also got our DNA testing back from Ancestry.com…and I wrote a post about it…which you’ll find here.

Writing

I finished the structural rewrite for Careful What You Wish For. It’s not scheduled in to my editor for another couple of months so in the meantime I have the structural rewrite for Escape To Curlew Cottage (due in for copy editing early next year) and the first draft of It’s In The Stars (scheduled in for a structural read through in December) to be getting on with.

I’ve also spruced up my author website a tad – you can check that out here – and have ordered some new covers for my first 2 books: Baby, It’s You and Big Girls Don’t Cry. These will be available in print before Christmas.

I also released Wish You Were Here and Happy Ever After to Kobo and configured these really cool little purchase buttons that lets you choose your format.

Finally, on the book front, I’m almost ready to hit publish on I Want You Back. I actually had this finished by the end of 2017 but have been delaying until Careful What You Wish For was done. It just needs a blurb, some formatting and a cover. I’ll be sending it out into the world softly, without a launch as such.

Phew. Between that and the day job it’s no wonder I’ve finished the month exhausted.

I’m also re-jigging my author Instagram page @thehungryauthor. Going forward anything to do with books and baking will be there.

Reading

• 

• 

I read 7 books over September with 2 stand-outs: Tie Me Down, by Janet Elizabeth Henderson and Kevin Kwan’s Crazy Rich Asians. I’m not normally a fan of the movie tie-in, but in this case, I loved the movie so much that I had to read the book. Spoiler alert, there are differences, but both the book and the movie are so fabulous in their own right that its pointless dwelling on that.

Watching

• Utopia (ABC) – I’m sure the writers have spies in my office
• Sea-change (Channel 9) – it grew on me
• My Life Is Murder (Channel 10) – easy watching
• C.B. Strike (Foxtel). Each of these two-part series is based on Robert Galbraith’s (JK Rowling writing as) Cormorant Strike novels and are well worth a watch.
• Lucifer (Netflix) – it’s like fake cream cheese on white bread with butter: a guilty pleasure
• Masked Singer – weirdly and ridiculously addictive

Listening

After working my way through Gary Mehigan’s A Plate To Call Home, I’m heading into the archives of Desert Island Discs (BBC) for my walks – there are some real treasures in some of these episodes.

Cooking

On account of being away as much as I have been there hasn’t been a lot of action in the kitchen.

I have, however, managed a post most Saturdays on my recipe site BKD Brookford Kitchen Diaries. Check out this one for peanut butter chocolate crackle slice…

Okay, that was my month – and it was exhausting! How was yours?

It’s Thursday so that means lovin’ life linky time. You know the drill…click on the links below to share the love.

https://fresh.inlinkz.com/js/widget/load.js?id=d1626941e732cbb79b50