Happy belated book birthday to The Good, The Bad, And The Scandalous, published six years ago yesterday 
It was my first full length novel and part of the multi-author Heart of a Hero Series where one or both main characters are Regency homages to superheroes. Scandalous features Andrew Elliott, Earl of Hartland who is loosely based on Tony Stark/Iron Man, and Sarah Shipton, a woman hunted for a wrong she didn’t even know she committed.
Happy book birthday to No Rest for the Wicked 
First published on this day 6 years ago, it kicked off the multi-author series The Heart of a Hero and introduced Michael and Joanna Devlin, who are mortal Georgian-era homages to Daredevil and Black Widow.
When Lady Honoria Maitland reunites with her old friend Benedict Grey, she proposes an arrangement: a faux courtship that will smooth Benedict’s re-entry into society and please her father. But Honoria’s clever plan fails to account for Benedict’s heart…or her own desires.
This novella has:
Set in London during the Season.
Heat Level: 1 flame – kisses only
And I’m posting chapters of my current Work-in-Progress When I Fall In Love as I write them! If you read Kissing by the Mistletoe and wondered when Kit was going to get his own book, or you just want to read a sweet Regency romance novella about a gentleman farmer, the neighbor he grew up with, and her goose, you can do it on Ko-Fi for the price of a cup of coffee. You can even leave comments on what you’ve read 😊
2021 has come and gone, fellow readers. Did you make your TBR Challenge goals?
For the second year in a row, I didn’t. And for the first time ever, the number of books I did read was only in the single digits. One the one hand, I’m disappointed–not just because I didn’t make my goal, but because reading has always been an activity I loved and spending less time with books makes me sad on several levels. On the other hand, it was an arbitrary number and while 2021 was better to me than 2020 was, it was still a rough year. So I’m shrugging my shoulders and closing the book–so to speak–on the 2021 TBR Challenge. The phrase “it is what it is” has been used perhaps too much lately, but 2021 was what it was.
At the end of 2020 I wished for peace and energy in the new year, but for 2022 I wish for healing and rest. I have a feeling there are a lot of us who could use both.
We have just under 4 weeks left in 2021, fellow readers! Are you going to make your TBR Challegne goal?
I’m still sitting at 4 TBR books read out of the 20 I’d hoped to read this year, but I have hope that I can get 16 more books in before the new year begins. With the exception of a couple of chores, outdoor stuff is done for the season–that was my audiobook listening time, so I don’t know how much more listening I’ll do until the weather warms up again. And I’m (slowly) plotting a new book, so that’s taking up some of the time I gained back when the yardwork went away. But I have some time off from the day job at the end of the month, and we’re still slow(ish) during the day so I have the energy to read once I’m clocked out.
I’m also wanting to read again, which has been my biggest struggle. Between this year’s changes (new house that needs more care than the the last place, new job that requires more hours than the last one) and the things that carried over (still on the board of Regency Fiction Writers, still have all the author-y things that need doing in addition to writing), I haven’t had a lot of mental bandwidth available for fun things. But that’s coming back! So here’s to cramming as much reading time into the rest of 2021 as we can ❤
Two months left in this 2021 TBR Challenge, fellow readers! Are you going to make your goal?
Despite what seems like ages spent doing yard work (and thus listening to audiobooks), I’m still very far away from my goal–I’ve completed only 4 out of the 20 TBR books I’d hope to read this year. Can I read 16 books in two months? Sure, if I didn’t have too much else going on. Will I be able to do it this year? I don’t know. I haven’t been very prolific so far, plus I have baby blankets to crochet for Christmas and I’ve begun plotting a new book (for the first time in forever!), so I’ll need to find time for writing again. I’m thinking about changing my goal, but this late in the year it feels like cheating, lol.
There is good news for me this year, though! I have only acquired 22 new books! My Goodreads shelf says that I gained 72 new books last year (yikes!), and that doesn’t count anything I may have borrowed from a friend or the library. So while I’m not reading nearly as fast as I did in previous years, I’m also not adding to the TBR pile as fast 😉
Hello fellow readers! We’re 2/3 of the way through 2021–how is your TBR Challenge going?
Mine is still going so very, very slowly, lol. But I’m making progress. I recently had my schedule changed at the day job, so I’ve started sleeping better and that makes me want to get back into the things I’ve been neglecting this year (reading among them). I’ve also continued to listen to audiobooks while I do yardwork–I’m about 3/4 of the way through Persuasion at the moment with a long weekend of outdoor chores coming up, so I expect to finish that one shortly. I’ve got two other (paper) books going, but they’re both professional development-type things, which have been difficult to focus on lately. I’m hoping both the schedule change and long weekend will help me reduce this sleep deficit I have going, and the PD things will be interesting again 🙂
So, while I’m still in the single digits of books read this year, we still have 18 weeks or so left in 2021 and I think I can get to my goal of 20 TBR books read. If I can do it while getting my writing back on track, even better!
We’re halfway through 2021, fellow readers. Are you halfway through your TBR Challenge?
If you’ve been following my updates this year, you’ll know I’ve been struggling mightily to read, so it won’t surprise you to learn that I am nowhere near the halfway point for my TBR Challenge goal. I DNF’d one book early in the year, and have literally read nothing (except spreadsheets at the day job!) since then.
Until this month.
I’ve mentioned before that I’d begun listening to audiobooks while I do yard work, and that did the trick. It’s a much slower way to read for me, but listening to someone read a book to me requires less energy than reading with my eyes. Plus, it makes cutting the grass a lot more enjoyable 🙂 Sherry Thomas’s A Study In Scarlet Women got me through a hot June, and I’m working on The Trial and Execution of the Traitor George Washington now (highly recommend A Study In Scarlet Women and looking forward to the rest of the series, unsure about George Washington yet). Maybe this is the year I’ll finally make a dent in the metaphorical pile of audiobooks I’ve amassed!
So I’ve only completed one book out of the 30 I’ve set as my goal for the year, but I’m not quite ready to make modifications yet. I want to get through the busy season at the day job (a couple more months and things will quiet down a bit), and re-configure my writing/release schedule (which has also fallen by the wayside temporarily). Then we’ll see where reading for pleasure fits in again 🙂
Five months down and seven to go, fellow readers! How is your TBR Challenge going?
According to Goodreads, I have only completed one book this year. The last time I read that little was when I was still a teacher with barely enough energy at the end of the day to take care of myself, so I’m both shocked and not at all surprised by my current total. Shocked because I didn’t realize the total was *so* low until I looked at it to write this post. Not at all surprised because, between the new house and the new day job, I haven’t been this busy in literal years. I’m enjoying both, but there’s a lot of work to do!
On the bright side, I’ve begun using an old trick to motivate myself when it comes time to do yard work–an audiobook! Right now I’m listening to Sherry Thomas’s A Study In Scarlet Women while I cut the grass, and sometimes that book is the only reason my yard doesn’t look like an abandoned lot, lol. The narrator is amazing and the story itself has been very interesting so far (though I sometimes wonder if I should have read this one with my eyes instead of my ears–I’m more of a visual learner than an auditory one). I’m not even halfway through, but I suspect this is a series I’m going to devour 🙂
Cora Lee, Regency Romance Author 