Magic in the Stacks

Hey all, Sam here. All right, here we go….July is already off to a better start than June (because this is my second blog post of the month, and I only had two posts in all of last month). It was a wild and packed month, though, and there is a lot to cover in this wrap-up, even though almost the entire wrap-up is just one section. Well, like 80% one section, 10% another section, and then the…

Hey all, Sam here. Okay, so June was obviously a reading focused month, which was wonderful, and I was happy to be able to focus on that, because I really needed a good reading month. I’d missed the feeling of just devouring book after book. That being said, I did mostly let my attention drift away from writing, which is sad because I was enjoying using my Freewrite and committing to writing…

Hey all, Sam here. After the amazing reading month I had in June, I’m ready to keep on reading, BUT I also want to give a little more priority to writing time as well. I basically neglected my writing all of June to indulge in a reading competition with a friend. That being said, I do still have my usual 12 book options for my monthly TBR. These are books I’m hoping to read, but you never know…

Hey all, Sam here. So….my May wrap-up is coming up so late because I’ve been deep in the trenches of binge-reading. That is absolutely because of the Pride Month reading challenge issued by my co-worker, and I’m not at all complaining about how much I’m reading. It has felt incredible. But it has meant that I haven’t really been focused on blogging or on creative writing. Oops. I have so many…

Hey all, Sam here. So May has been a pretty decent month for reading, and I’m honestly hoping to keep that reading momentum going in June. What’s also really fun is that June is my last month of reading before I compile my Top Ten Reads of 2026 (January-June Edition) post. There’s already a pretty decent list of books on that draft post, so I’m imagining at least a few honorable mentions in…

Hey all, Sam here. Today I wanted to try and do a little something different. We’ll see how this goes and I might explore some other fun sub-genres moving forward. There has been a massive rise in popularity for the LitRPG genre of books the past couple of years, although the format first achieved popularity more than a decade ago. And yet…it’s not a genre I’ve explored all that much, although I…

Hey all, Sam here. Welcome back to another Weekend Writer post. I’ve had my Freewrite Traveler for just over three weeks, and I figured it was time for a quick little post about it. Also, Freewrite is hosting a 50K May writing challenge, and yes, I already know that I’m trying to build up my writing habit in the Writer’s Atelier Write Brave Challenge (April 15-May 15), but I’d like to keep…

Hey all, Sam here. Do you know how difficult it was to choose which book was going to be the featured image for this post? There were like three books I wanted to choose, but unless I edited them to be all together in one image, I had to narrow it down to just one. Anyway, I had originally planned and intended on having this post go live on May 1st, but on April 28th we learned that David’s…

Hey all, Sam here. I’ve had a pretty good reading month for April, and that has been really nice. I even managed to tackle a couple chonky books, which is always a great feeling, and I’ll talk about all of those in less than a week (have to finish the month first because I’m still reading some books). But a few days ago I had to look around my library and decide what books I wanted to add to my…

Hey all, Sam here. I read this book last year, and actually had it finished in time for its release back in October…but then I didn’t get the review up. And then I had planned to get it written up for February, to be a nice Weekend Writer post in the same month as Valentine’s Day, because I thought it would be thematic. Obviously that didn’t work out either. So here we are, with me finally…

Hey all, Sam here. This post should have been up MONTHS ago. It’s kind of obvious to say that it has really been a struggle for me to write, whether that is my stories or here on the blog. I’m trying to work my way through some things and find ways to motivate myself to write more, so hopefully I can turn things around a bit. I’m seeing all kinds of posts about BookCon this weekend, and it’s…

Hey all, Sam here. I almost feel like I have to get this post up. Last night I did something that was a bit of an impulsive splurge. Well…I guess it wasn’t all that impulsive. I’ve been staring at the Freewrite Traveler device for a year or so now, and telling myself that it was a purchase I could justify once I started writing regularly again. However, the place I work was bought up by a…

Hey all, Sam here. Am I finishing up this post on my phone because one of the cats took up residence on my lap before work so I couldn’t use my laptop to type up anything? Well, yes, because my cats are spoiled, and Luna doesn’t often ask for lap time, so I indulge her whenever ahe does want some cuddles. But I actually really don’t like blogging from my phone. I can’t see much of the screen…

Hey all, Sam here. Did I start drafting today’s post just a few days into March? Yep, but I was already pretty sure I knew what books I wanted to pick up for the month of April, so it seemed like an easy choice. I actually only ended up changing two of the books on here from the beginning of the month until now, and that’s totally fine. My TBRs are fairly flexible and dependent on my mood (for…

Hey all, Sam here. I’ve been meaning to talk about this for a little while, but I keep forgetting to sit down and type this up. After ten years of this blog, I’m about at my limit when it comes to photo storage. For the free plan you only get 3GB, which isn’t a lot, but it has worked for me up until now. If this blog had a bigger following or more consistent posts and views and all of that,…

Hey all, Sam here. February was an interesting month. Honestly work was pretty stressful the first couple weeks of the month, and I started to think that I was going to end up getting nothing done because I was just so tired from all of it. To be completely honest, all the stress is driving me deeper into a just barely functional burnout state. But then things eased up just the slightest bit,…