My weight seems to have stabilized. I keep going up and down through the same two pounds, two to three pounds over my goal weight. So I’m taking that as a win. At some point, I’ll focus on losing those last two pounds, but in the meanwhile, I’m pleased.

Particularly since I feel as though I’m at the correct weight. My clothes fit. I even put on my tightest jeans this last week and didn’t even realize that I was wearing “that pair” until halfway through the morning. They just fit, like everything else.

Writing – I will be close to 50K words for this morning. Probably around 47K after today. On the days when I have focus and can write, I have been writing. On the days I can’t, I still try to get in at least some words.

I am not going to make my word count goals for the year. I’m okay with that. It’s kind of been a hard year.

As for exercise, last week I averaged 9K steps per day. And while I focus on steps, I went and looked at my calories burned for the past two weeks. According to my Fitbit, I’m averaging burning between 1700-1800 calories per day. I figure that’s pretty good for a woman of my age.

I started reading fiction again. I stopped when the pandemic hit. Just couldn’t concentrate. Realized I was really missing it, so made the effort, and found that I could again.

I went through the top 100 epic fantasy books on Amazon, and pulled two dozen samples of books down, things that I thought I might enjoy. There were SO MANY that I looked at and just said, “Ugh.”

Then I went through and read the samples. That was very interesting as well as illuminating for me. Market research as well as discovering what it is that I like to read now.

Very few of the samples caught and held me. Of the two dozen, only three.

For example, in one, two women were raped and killed as plot devices to propel the main (male) character forward.

In the first 20% of the book.

WTF.

Another moved clumsily between one set of characters and another. The writer was trying to develop tension between the two couples. So with both pairs, there were issues. However, I didn’t care enough about either of them to keep reading.

What I learned is that voice will hold me through a lot of other things. If a character has voice and opinion, I’ll keep reading.

What catches me next is the magic/world. How well realized is it? Does it spark my own imagination?

Last but not least, veracity. I’m sorry, but a group of people who do not own clocks do NOT “wait two minutes” for anything. They have no concept of what a minute is. They may or may not even know what an hour is.

So is your world actually set in some other place and time, or is it present day with a few arcane things thrown in?

Sorry. One of my pet peeves.

I’m really enjoying reading again. I’m also reading a non-fiction book about perimenopause and that’s been fun too. More on that later.

What are you reading these days? Fiction or non-fiction? Short or long?