If there’s one word that perfectly describes August, it would be this: ugh.

Or maybe that’s more of a noise. Either way, the month just wooshed by in a blur of writing, working, and being mercilessly punished by the sun, presumably for the great human crime of the Industrial Revolution. Also, a prom-themed birthday party for one of my friends.

I said last month’s update would be short and sweet and then proceeded to ramble. This month’s update will actually be short and sweet because I once again find myself in DOING ALL THE THINGS mode.

My social media presence has been pretty sparse the past month as I’ve been pouring my concentration into the revision. I’m definitely not happy about that, and I can already feel myself falling out of the habit/fuck-giving space around social media. Routine social media updates have never really been my thing, so trying to make a schedule of it has been a matter of stepping outside of my comfort zone. I’m giving myself a little grace on it for now, but will have to be back at it soon.

I just signed up for Threads, because having another social media account will definitely help all that.

Onto the book update!

Chapters revised for the month of August:

• Chapter 1*
• Chapter 2*
• Chapter 7
• Chapter 8
• Chapter 9
• Chapter 10
• Chapter 11

That chunk of chapters represents the entirety of Part II. You’ll also see chapters 1 & 2 on there again because there were some outstanding issues I was dissatisfied with after my initial pass, so I made another pass to make more changes.

After completing the initial revisions of Parts I & II, I uploaded them to Google docs and passed them along to my biggest fan and captive beta reader–my husband. He’s left me a lot of great feedback, including spotting typos and pointing out things that don’t quite make sense. He also leaves a lot of these types of comments:

Also

And

It definitely keeps me entertained through the process.

I still have Parts III & IV to revise, but I’ll make a little pitstop soon to implement Lucas’s feedback so that I can send the first two parts through the next phase of beta reading with my writing group.

So that’s where we are. Lots of progress, but it hardly feels like enough. There’s really nothing to do at this point but keep plugging away, though. The social media accounts may continue to be a little quiet over the next month, and I may not have another blog post until the September update, but rest assured that there’s plenty of work going on behind the scenes!