September 2025 Update

I'm on a roll!

OK, so it's been a few days of consistent writing and releases - which feels SUPER great, because every month has felt like two steps forward, two steps back, one step sideways. I'm going to try to keep this Update short ("Sure, Break, you go ahead and try" I hear you all saying while rolling your eyes.)

This is officially six months of my family member's mental health crisis rearing it's ugly head, which directly coincides with me being behind my writing schedule for the same amount of time. I've gotten 'close' to catching up a couple of times, but I cannot let this continue. My goal this month is simple - catch up on ALL the sponsored content, including October, so that November starts fresh.

What's Coming Up This Month?

In no particular order, here is what the Sponsor tiers have in the backlog (barring a few more additional picks that need to be logged):

• AMA - 50k words

• Unexpected Affections - 45k

• Red Flags Go Faster - 35k (Alpha Readers)

• Le Francais - 5k

Even without those extra picks that still need to come in, that's 130k words to cover in the next 30 days, and I've got Canadian Thanksgiving, an extended family wedding, and a 2-day event scheduled where I definitely won't get any writing done. Yikes! But doable, and I'm God Damn Determined to get this ship patched up and on course.

I'll likely split the bigger numbers up into halves to spread the love through the month a bit and to give myself some smaller goals to tick off and feel like I'm keeping my momentum up.

OK, I'm hearing many of you asking the question - What about FoF and QTNW?

I'm going to have to take the month for both of those stories. Editing 6 chapters and then writing a new one takes a good 3-4 days if I'm on point and lucky, which is a significant amount of time when I'm trying to grind through such a big word count. November will ABSOLUTELY start with new FoF and QTNW, whether the catch-up goals are all met or not. I don't like it, but I kinda need to just let them be on Pause for a brief month just for my stress levels not to feel their word counts accumulating once more.

Other Stuff

September's mid month update seems like it was yesterday for me, so I'm not really feeling like there's a whole lot of new, interesting things to mention here.

My nightly before-bed reading in Aug/September was the final book in Anthony Ryan's Covenant of Steel series - if you like gritty fantasy with a military bent, it's very good. Not quite as gritty as the Black Company, but close enough. It also had some really interesting themes around religion/faith and I'm looking forward to whatever else he does in the setting in the future. I've now started Conan: Songs of the Slain by Tim Lebbon since I'm a big Conan fan, but so far I'm mildly disappointed.

With three big family events going on for me this month and trying to grind out these word goals, I'm not likely to get too much other stuff going on - which sort of feels like a good thing for me right now. The last few days I've just been feeling better, hitting my word goals for the day. Now I just need to keep it up!

That's all for tonight. I hope you all had a great September, and if you're into Spooky Season, may the next 30 days be as spooky as you hope.

Cheers,
~Break.