Posted by As of today, my summer is over.
Fall classes begin today at my university. Teaching pre-service teachers is kind of a tightrope walk these days, but I’m still passionate about the work.
We’re still not fully back to pre-COVID status on my campus; I’m teaching hybrid courses, which means we’re together on campus one day a week and working online the rest of the week. I actually like this model, and might even prefer it over traditional in-person classes. Students who aren’t comfortable speaking up in the classroom definitely participate more online, so there’s a wider array of voices and perspectives in our discussion. And meeting in the classroom gives us the benefits of traditional face-to-face learning, as well as authentic community building. Also, it’s more flexible for students juggling busy lives.
Anyway, I like hybrid teaching. That’s something good I learned teaching during the pandemic.
This summer was … about as productive as I had planned and not one bit more. At the beginning of the summer I blogged about my plans for the summer: “ … write, write, write. Gone are the days when I could expect to write three novels in the summer, however. Now, I’ll be satisfied if I get one written and thrilled if I can do more than that.”
To recap how that went: I am satisfied. I am not thrilled.
Yesterday, I came across this post in my FB memories, from five years ago:
While I was patting my back hard enough to bruise in that post, it wasn’t an outrageously unusual pace for my writing back in those days. Oh, how things have changed in five years. This summer, I managed to write one novel, and I just barely squeaked it out at almost the last minute: I finished the manuscript about a week ago. One book in three months. Ugh.
On the bright side, I like the story a lot, and beta feedback has been good so far, so it looks like the book I just finished will be my next release, at the beginning of November. It’s the 3rd Crossings Collection book, featuring an American woman who meets a beautiful Italian man in the hills of Tuscany.
In the spring I wrote a Christmas novella/story collection (it’s kind of both one story and several) for the Brazen Bulls, and that will release for the holiday season and complete my publishing year. Details for both releases to come.
Once I get my teaching underway for the semester, I’ll start my next WIP, Book 6 of the Brazen Bulls Birthright. Assuming that writing goes well, it’ll be my first release of 2023. If you read Restless, you might already have a guess as to who will lead Book 6. I dropped a few breadcrumbs in there. 😊
I get the feeling that this summer largely sucked for most people the world over, but I hope you had some good times, too, despite the heat and drought and fires and all the rest of it. And I hope our fall is calmer all around.
xoxo
s–