Category: Uncategorized

What I did on my extended vacation

Posted on by KnotMagick Studios

I don’t even know where to start with this. I kind of fell off the map there for a while. It wasn’t intentional. Short version: right after we moved, I had bad flares of multiple chronic illnesses. I got diagnosed with ADHD due to extremely low serotonin, and was also diagnosed with autism. Short version: I was exhausted all the time, sleeping up to 14 hours a day, and I couldn’t concentrate or remember anything. Reading became a chore. I couldn’t focus on a book for more than a page, and for about a year I wasn’t even listening to audiobooks because my concentration was so bad I needed dead silence to complete the smallest task.

Three years on, I’m doing a lot better. I have new and adjusted meds, some different coping skills, and a good care team looking out for me. I am finally back to the point where I can not just read, but remember what I read and enjoy it again.

In that interim period, I’ve decided that I need to change my focus a little so that I’m working more intensively on fewer things. Reading is one of the things I want to hone in on, because it feels like a part of me is missing.

I also took time off from writing, but I’m back at it now in a much more relaxed way. I’m trying not to give myself hard deadlines or put too much pressure on myself. I’m working on a rewrite of a cozy mystery I started a few years ago, trying to get that into shape so I can query it.

The past three years I’ve had to really look at my priorities, and sadly cut things out of my life. Things that I missed, goals I wanted to reach, things I wanted to do and places I wanted to go. But my body is no longer capable of Doing All The Things, at least not right now, and until it is, this is what I have to work with.

Stockings and Spells by Nancy Warren

Posted on by KnotMagick Studios

Genre: cozy mystery, holiday
Secondary genre: contemporary, paranormal
Format read: ebook
Series: The Vampire Knitting Club vol 5
Rating:

Okay, yes. I am behind on posting reviews.

This cozy mystery series is far from great literature. It’s predictable, the characters are odd and not always in a charming way, the writing is so-so and non cis-het-white rep is pretty much nonexistant. The main character is neither a vampire, nor a knitter.

But I still love them.

I guess you could call them a guilty pleasure read for me, since there is absolutely nothing challenging about them. I find them relaxing and I usually get through them in a couple of sittings.

But anyway. The book.

This is a Christmas story set against the backdrop of and Oxford, England craft fair. The highlight of this event is a Tolkein-like author, reclusive in the extreme, who has been convinced to speak and sign books at the college attached to the fair. But things quickly go sideways when a vendor is attacked, people start turning up dead, and the author suddenly pulls out of the event. But the busy-body group of vampire knitters are on the case, trying to find out who is behind the violence and what secret the author is trying so hard to protect.

This was my de-stress read during an anxiety-laden trip home for the holidays. I don’t sit down to binge on these books, but when I’m feeling stressed I’ll usually pick one up to give my brain a break, and they usually do the trick. So if you want to wind down before bed, this series is a good pick.