I feel terrible about not posting here for three weeks! Okay, not really. Maybe just a twinge of guilt. But I swear, I've been busy -- writing! I have a quick turnaround for a project so every spare moment has been going to that (it's going swell, thanks for asking!), but because my day job has been so crazy, my spare moments have been few and far between.

And I may or may not have snuck in the time to read Mockingjay.

I can't even talk about it.

Okay, I can. NO SPOILERS. I will just say that, even though I have my issues with some things - pacing, what was left out versus what was included, and that off-the-mark epilogue - I can honestly say I've never had a book affect me like that before. I finished it up last Thursday night when I was home alone, zonked out from a long day, and I just...lost it. There was a moment at the end (not the "big death" - that one didn't really affect me much) where I just fell apart.

I finished the book, and just sort of laid in a stupor for an hour or so, and then fell into a bad sleep during which I awoke every two hours thanks to dreams about the Capitol.

So of course, now that Mockingjay is over, and I had just come off of re-reading the first two in the trilogy, I needed some light-hearted contemporary fiction. So I turned to Candace Bushnell's The Carrie Diaries, which I'd purchased for my Kindle months ago and never got around to reading. Well! I like it! It's funny and breezy and is it wrong that I am only picturing Sarah Jessica circa Girls Just Wanna Have Fun? I mean, if that's wrong, I don't want to be right, but still. It's just what I needed.

This weekend I am taking a day off (and we have Monday off) to go down to the beach. I haven't been since July 4th, and I. Cannot. Wait. Of course, I have tons of writing to do, but that's okay! It will be gray and cool-ish outside, which let's be honest, is my favorite weather, yes even for the last weekend of the summer don't judge me.

September is probably my fourth favorite month, but it's the precursor to the rest of my favorite months, so I'm chirpy and optimistic today. I hope you all are, too.