Another month is (almost) over, so let’s see what I’ve been up to in October.

Reading

With my beta swap finished in late September, I’ve gone back to reading for fun. I finished the fifth book in The Silvan series, which was quite a tome at more than 700 pages, and started reading the final, sixth book, which is even longer (at some 900 pages, so I hope it won’t take me until the end of the year).

Writing and art

I haven’t yet done much on the writing front… again. This was mostly because there were more pressing things in my life, especially tied to the hiking club I’m a part of, in regard to finalizing our schedule for the next year. Making maps and filling out missing information took a lot of my free time.

I’ve used a bit of the sunny days in mid-October to get back to making simple sketches. I have a lot to practice and improve on that front if I want to share how I see my characters with my readers. But when I took a picture of it with my phone’s camera, it recognized the faces as faces, so maybe I’m not as bad as I thought. Artist’s doubt obviously applies to me in drawing the same as it does in writing.

There was one more sketch that I found anatomically a bit better but… well, it’s not something I’d be brave enough to share, not yet at least. Because it definitely goes to 18+ territory.

Hiking

As hinted above, I had some work to do for the hiking club, which took some of my time, but that was mostly in the afternoon hours of workdays, after work. I’ve managed to go hiking a fair bit, reaching 90 km this month, and getting me quite close to the 1000km/year mark I’ve managed to pass only once so far, in the pre-covid year 2019.

That said, my hiking this month had quite some special guests, so to say. After five years, my uncle [who’s living in the USA since the mid-90s] came to visit us for three weeks. He accompanied me – along with my sister and my mother, the former of which was last hiking with me before COVID as well – on one quite charming autumn hike I described in the second half of this post. I also went on another hike with him just a couple of days later – after taking a day off from work just for that purpose. That hike, and the other from the rest of the month, will probably get some attention in the next month. With plenty of photos to share. For now, a small teaser:

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Well, that’s it for now. I hope October has been treating you well, and that November will be just as good. Or better. Until next time…