Offbeat Offline: August 2022

Welcome to Offbeat Offline, where I bring you up-to-date with what went on in my life during the month just gone, give you a sneak peek of my next shenanigans, and share my favourite posts of late!

What happened last month to yours truly? A Seanan McGuire full immersion, a perm touch-up and...more heat. Also, I had to trash my TMST post for August 30th (Which Books Are You Looking Forward to Reading This Fall?) because in my customising frenzy I messed up with the code (or maybe more like, Blogger finally lost it on me 😂), and I didn't feel like starting the post anew. Then again, later I noticed that some of my previous, similarly long (and heavily coded) posts have the same problem that the TMST one had - if I look at them in the HTML editor window, from halfway through all the text is in black, instead of showing the different part of the codes involved in different colours with only the actual post content in black (I don't know if I'm making sense...). I mean, the codes WORK - but I wonder if they're going to stand the test in case Blogger makes more changes in the future like the one where I almost lost all my reviews a few years ago 😱. I save everything, but I could never go back and replace ALL my posts if the worst happened...Anyhow, it's clear that Blogger can't handle long posts without freaking out LOL. Maybe it's trying to tell me something...Anyhow, onto my August recap!

📚 DOWN THE INCRYPTID HOLE. I read 4 books in August (one of them was a novella) and a number of short stories. I've been on on a Seanan McGuire roll lately (I mean, more than usual LOL), and only one of my reads was by another author...So:

I read Discount Armageddon, Midnight Blue-Light Special and Half-Off Ragnarok by Seanan McGuire (adult - Book 1,2 & 3 in the InCryptid series), plus most of the free in-world short stories. The series has reached Book 11, and another installment is scheduled for next spring, so I finally decided to get up to date with it...Mini reviews coming later in the year (they're on Goodreads for now).

I also read Your Favorite Band Cannot Save You by Scotto Moore (adult - novella). A tad too weird for me, but fun. (See review schedule below).
I was approved for Seeds for the Swarm by Sim Kern (YA - it comes out on Nov. 1st, so I'll have my review up in October) and The Getaway by Lamar Giles (YA - see review schedule below).

Here is my review plan for the month:

• Full Immersion by Gemma Amor (on Thu. 8th);
• The Getaway by Lamar Giles [see above], Your Favorite Band Cannot Save You by Scotto Moore [see above] and Picture Unavailable by Andrew J. Brandt (in a mini-review round on Tue. 13th).
• Where the Drowned Girls Go by Seanan McGuire (on Sun. 18th).
• The Sacrifice by Rin Chupeco, Into the Sublime by Kate A. Boorman and The Paradox Hotel by Rob Hart (in a mini-review round on Fri. 23rd).

Reviews aside, I'll participate in the last Tell Me Something Tuesday round of the month on the 27th, I SWEAR (question: Do you follow your favourite authors on social media? Do you interact with them?). As I explained above, I trashed my only TMST post for last month ("...you had one job..."), but at least I managed to visit yours...😅 Anyhow, I plan on doing at least a couple next month!

🥵 AND THE BEAT HEAT GOES ON. The temps have been a tad less brutal lately, but still stifling. August has been a repeat of July for me: only going out for grocery shopping (and twice for hair - one dye job, one perm), eating cold cuts and stuff that involves a minimal amount of cooking, clinging to fans, sleeping poorly, rinse, repeat. I'm SO ready for a change, after three whole months of this misery. Let's hope September will bring a measure of relief...it rained yesterday, and we should get more rain over the weekend, so the worst should be over (finger crossed). 

💇‍♀️ GOOD BUT NOT GREAT. I got my perm fixed at the new hairdresser's (top, bangs and some of the longer locks in the rear that were almost straight), and while the hair actually curled this time, there's still work to do. I desperately need my hair to curl tight up to its roots (like it used to), so that I can get it trimmed after a few months and still keep a minimum length of curl, and this hasn't happened yet. Even in my bangs there are locks that are super-curly at the very end, but retain a length of straight hair at the roots, so that if you cut the end, the perm is virtually gone. I told the new HD that, and we need to work on it in the future, because I can't keep perming my top/bangs twice a year in between a complete perm and another. It used to be once, for goodness' sake...Stress for me, stress for the hair, money. Ugh. It never ends.

📻THE SOUND OF SILENCE. I used to be surrounded by music (long before I started working in radio - I've always loved it, which was my reason for becoming a radio host in the first place), but since I've had to leave my job, I don't have the foggiest idea which songs have been released and how they sound. I'm slowly turning into one of those people who hate any songs that doesn't remember them of their youth and who think that all new music is subpar. It pains me to lose touch completely, but then again, I can't muster the energy to care about who's putting forth which song and to listen to one of the "other radio stations", or to look up the latest releases on YouTube...and that's horrible. Maybe it's just that music has been the core of my job for so long, and I had grown to hate that job for so many reasons long before my workplace closed, but the fact is - now that I don't have to keep abreast of new stuff, I'm basically pretending that music stopped on Apr. 29th, the day I hung up my microphone...Really sad.

PUBLISHING NEWS/TIPS

• None this month.

THINK-PIECES, DISCUSSIONS, ORIGINAL FICTION

• Kit muses on disability representation in books.
• Quinley shares the video of her conference paper about the theme of the Changeling Child in Celtic fairy tales, drawing "the similarities between this theme and present-day dilemmas of parents of disabled children".
• In the aftermath of a certain George R.R. Martin's faux pas, the Orangutan Librarian wonders what being "real fans" means.
• Cee Arr explores the balance between art as a hobby or a source of income in the short poem Who Is She?

REVIEWS/RECOMMENDATIONS

• I didn't take any notes this month...😳

OTHER

• Kit sings the praises of s a couple of quirky, relaxing games: Townscaper and Calico.

That's it for now! (Or, not really, because there was more life stuff going on in the very last days of the month, but since it's spilling into September, I'll tell you about it in my next recap...). My next post will be up on Thu. 8th, and it will be my review for Full Immersion I announced above.

So, what were your highs/lows in the past month?