Hi friends!! It has been a while so I thought it was about time for an update from me. I did pop in with a big old list of anticipated books for 2025 post just before Christmas¹ but otherwise not a whole lot since Blaugust last year.

So what’s been going on with me since August 2024? Well… to quickly recap, at that point I was streaming (mostly World of Warcraft), I was playing WoW of course and the expansion had released so I was levelling up and getting my character raid and mythic+ ready, and amidst all of that, trying to retain my reading habit and just really having the desire to put aside all projects and work on my cross stitch a bunch. With blogging that month added in, I did not have the spoons for a whole lot of anything and blogging fell by the wayside, as did my streams.

Alas, I am concerned consistent streaming just isn’t for me, at this point in time, but I have other hobbies that are very important to me that I work to keep up with! Oh and healthwise I was waiting on an appointment to talk to a surgeon about potentially having my stupid little stone-riddled gallbladder removed, which I was nearing a year of waiting for any kind of actual help for, few years longer with the pains.

That has been a fun old time, let me tell ya!

But let’s get into what I’ve been up to since.

Foo Fighters in June

Okay okay this one isn’t a since thing but I never got around to sharing with you our little trip to Cardiff in late June to see the Foo Fighters, one of my alltime favourite bands.

This had been a big bucket list item for me. I’d missed their previous tour due to financial constraints, and there was a one-off concert they did at Wembley, I think it was while Taylor was still alive, I missed that because both getting to London and the costs around that would have been extortionate. Then Taylor passed and I thought I’d missed my chance. Couldn’t make the memorial concert either. So when tickets went on sale for a proper UK tour for their most recent album, and I could swing the cost of them (it was around £120 for two seated tickets) and they were going to be doing a leg in Cardiff? I leapt at the chance. I grabbed tickets and we dealt with everything else.²

And let me tell you: this was one of the greatest experiences of my life. It was a gorgeous few days in the Welsh capital, lovely sunny summer days, we had just missed Cardiff Pride so there were still rainbows and lovely messages everywhere, and we stayed in a hotel in the stunning Cardiff Bay area. Ugh. My heart just fills with so much love thinking of these days.

We had a little time to wander around, do a little shopping and explore somewhat, have a lovely meal in a Japanese restaurant (I was recovering from the flu so I couldn’t taste it but it was great!) and just chill out together. We don’t get nearly enough time to do that these days. Oh and the little place we went to for breakfast was divine as well. The cost was steep, they always vastly over-price hotels for big events like this one, but we managed it. We got talking to another couple in the hotel bar who’d also come up to see the Foos, and yeah, just great memories.

And then the concert itself, oh the atmosphere. There were people everywhere in Foo Fighters and Nirvana T-shirts, glittery face paint, you just can’t beat an atmosphere like that, you know?

It was tough for Dan who struggles with crowds, but we got through and because I had my walking stick with me they let us skip the queues so we could go up in the lifts which was really nice because we were sat quite high up in the Millenium Stadium (or whatever we call it these days) and I’d have struggled with that.

We caught the end of the first support act, The Himalayas, a young generic rock band. Think Royal Blood with with actual talent. And then the big support act came on, Wet Leg! If you haven’t heard of Wet Leg yet, they’re well worth checking out. British indie rock fronted by two young ladies, with lots of attitude. They were great.

Then finally, the guys came out. I will admit to shedding a few tears. There’s just so much emotion built in with seeing an artist you have loved so much for so many years, you know?

I just sat there, singing my little heart out for… however long it was. 2? 3 hours? They put on an incredible show, as I knew they do. We got a little Taylor memorial section where they played Aurora as the sun was setting, and the way the light was hitting the edges of the roof, just glancing up at the blue sky above, the seagulls flying overhead…. that’s a memory that will be lodged in my memory for a long, long time.

They ended on Best of You, the crowd crying out their “WOOOOA-OOOAAAAH WOOOOOOA-OOOOOAAAAH”s until they came back on for their encore, where they played my favourite song from the new album, The Teacher. Then brought out Taylor Hawkin’s son to play drums with them for This Is a Call from their first album. And of course, finally ended on Everlong, which we all stood for.

I’m so so glad we got to see them live at last, and who knows if we’ll ever be able to again with everything that went down just a couple months after. But I have my memories and the tour shirt I bought, and years and years and years of music.

The Gallbladder

So to get the crappy bit out of the way, my father-in-law drove me to the hospital to have a consultancy about getting my problematic gallbladder removed… I want to say September? It was certainly in the autumn. Long story short, waited a while to be seen because … well it’s healthcare, when isn’t it backed up? When I finally got in to see the doctor it went by fairly quick. He told me all the potential complications and how people get surgical regret (which can’t be reversed) and basically sounded like he was trying to talk me out of having the surgery at all. I’m sure it’s all stuff they have to say to cover themselves lest any of these things actually happen and then the patient’s all “Well they never told me this could happen!!” But never to fear, eating food is pain, discomfort and nausea for me so I said that of course I still want the surgery. This thing is not getting better and my quality of life is kinda awful with all this going on and I just want it fixed. I… really hate the idea of having no gallbladder knowing what happens inside you without one shudder but everybody I have spoken to who has had theirs removed says it changed their life. I want that! Hell. To be able to just eat without worrying I’ll be doubled over in agonising pain and then vomiting later on, that would be enough. I’ve cut most fat out of my diet, and it’s still not great. Hell, I went a weekend just gone without the meds that help me manage it and I was just suffering.

I don’t plan to bring dollops of fat back into the diet, maybe a rare treat here and there, perhaps I could balance things a little better with just a speck more fat and a lot less sugar, you know? So yeah, we got that confirmed, they took my vitals and measurements, I filled out a form. Then I bought myself a seasonal coffee from the Costa in the waiting room as a little treat to perk myself up a bit and my father-in-law drove us home.

Aaaand I’m still waiting to get my appointment for the actual surgery, so I struggle on, meanwhile. The good news is I’m not in constant pain, so long as I take my relevant meds and am very careful about what I eat and drink, I get by. But some days it just decides to throw a tantrum and heck it sucks. I just want it gone so that’s one less thing I have to worry about. It took a year from the time I first went into the doctors about the pain to getting in to see a doctor about surgery, with all the messing about, forgetting about me and all that, so I’m just hopeful it won’t be much longer as I was told it’d be “in the new year”.

Books!

Once I wound down the World of Warcraft playing I got my reading habit rolling again and ended up finishing 2024 with [25?] books read. I’m pondering still doing a little best of 2024 post, actually. I had thought nah, it’s a bit too late for that now but I think it’ll still be fun, yeah? So we’ll see if I can finangle that.

I ended up getting through a fair few horror novels and novellas, but also focused on continuing books I’d already started and paused for something else and series I’ve started. I have a bit of a time limit with series with my awful memory. If I don’t continue within 2 or 3 years then I might as well either DNF the whole series or restart it. Same for books I set “on pause”.

So one of my main goals for 2025 is to work on those a little more. Keep on with the series I have started and see which ones I’m able to wrap up, and also “reclaim the bookmarks” aka actually read and finish or DNF all of the books I put on pause. I’d ideally like, yes, access to all of my bookmarks again. I do have a lot, I collect them, but even so! But also I’ve love to have more of a clear reading plate. Just a handful of series I work through at a time, no books waiting for me to get back to them – well one or two is acceptable, I have many more than that right now, just nice and clean. Makes things a lot easier for my brain, much less chaotic and scrambled.

So far in 2025 this has been going pretty well! I’m doing my best to work on series and books on pause, I did pick one back up (Dragonfly Falling, book two of the Shadows of the Apt series by Adrian Tchaikovsky) and finished it and I tried to get back to finishing up the Clocktaur duology from T. Kingfisher but either the prose in those books isn’t working for me any more, or I am very much in the wrong mood for it right now. I’ve already got 10 books read (which is a lot for me!) and 2 DNFed so I’m very happy with how I’m going. Lots of horror, and lots of epic fantasy, as my reading mood fell firmly in that area back in February. I feel like all of this organisation has been really, really helped by me starting and maintaining a Reading Journal!

A Reading Journal

Nicknamed my “BooJo” by me as it’s not quite a “BuJo” (Bullet Journal) and I got tired of typing reading journal constantly. My friend Kit suggested BooJo (short for Book Journal, of course) and I’ve stuck with that cus you know I love me some ghosties.

I was talked me into starting one late last year and seeing theirs sparked something within me. I love journals and scrapbooks and little arty books that have your personality, your stuff, it’s just yours. And I’ve got my reading hobby to a point where it very much is my favourite hobby. I do my best to prioritise getting in several hours of reading per day because I have so many books I want to read, and I’m a slow reader, yet I find a lot of the online tracking tools like Goodreads and its ilk don’t quite work for me the way they do others, focusing way too much on quantification and gamification of a hobby that for me, is all about just sitting down and absorbing a good story. That style of tracking works really well for many, but I always feel boxed in by it, and kinda made to feel bad that I “only” read so much in such an amount of time, right?

Not the way with my BooJo! In here I have TBRs, a Series and Time Spent Reading Tracker, little reviews, hauls, what I read on which days calendar. It’s exactly what I need it to be, it’s a way for me to create art around my favourite hobby and have a lovely visual log to look back on as a memory in the years to come. It brings me a lot of joy!

Video Games

As for video games, I did my best with WoW’s most recent expansion but the time spent back at home and then in Cardiff in June really sapped the passion I had for the game earlier in the year. But I had the expansion and I felt I should give it a good go, and I did! I got my Mage up to max level and I joined my guild for raids and Mythic+ but after a while I found myself only wanting to log in for those things. And gone are the days where you can realistically do that… the game truly is a different beast nowadays and every time I go back I’m looking for something that just isn’t there any more. I love love hanging out with my guild, but the game… I dunno.

I kept on for a little while, purely because I wanted to play with my friends, but I stopped raiding once we got to Heroic level, that’s generally where it gets way too spoon intensive for me, and I left Mythic+ behind once we’d got our 2k rating, with the caveat that I’d pop back in to help if needed. And come January, I cancelled my subscription again. To get back to my reading. You see the cycle here?

The problem is, with all the travelling in June, Blaugust, the new expansion in WoW and my streaming, stuff had to give back there, I cannot keep all of that up. Streaming I couldn’t manage to fit in with the energy I had, blogging also had to fall off, and I’d really hoped those would pick back up after I set WoW aside. Well, I have come to realise that consistent streaming may not be for me. I’d love to say I’ll get back to it some time but it’s so draining and I have barely any desire to play games at all right now, so it wouldn’t be any time soon. And I’ve also often considered getting into BookTube, but that brings a lot other problem of getting video ideas, jotting down talking points, recording a video, editing, making thumbnails… At the end of the day, with social media in the mess that it’s in, I think I’ve just realised that I should stick to my lanes. Which I feel is in writing.

I’ve had a few months away from games on the whole, but I am dipping into things here and there as of this week. I’m working through a few demos I have installed and I’ve picked my Dragon Age 2 playthrough back up. I could barely remember what was going on but I’ve already restarted it a couple of times so to hell with it, I’m just going to finish it so I’m done with the game and can move onto Inquisition when I’m ready. It doesn’t take up much of my time though. With the amount of sleep I need, my priority for reading, journalling, and writing, (all dependent on how much energy I have to offer at any given time) and then my beloved cross stitch, there’s just no time in the day. But it’s nice once in a while!

My Writing

My hope here is to blog a little more. I don’t yet know how regularly or consistently I can manage because my energy levels fluctuate wildly and I never know from day to day what I’ll be able to do. It’s taken me several days to write this post, although in fairness this is a bit of a monster, but you get me. My aim would be shorter posts. Maybe little updates from me here and there, thoughts on certain topics I come across, maybe the odd book or movie review, sharing things I’m making. I’d love to just incorporate my life, my love of books, my cross stitch and journaling and viewing habits and tabletop adventures and all the things that make me me. Usually this veers towards a bookish focus but I have never striven for this space, not since it was Dragons & Whimsy, nor now it is The Dragon Chronicle, to be anything more or less. We’ll just have to see how I do at making that work the way I imagine it. But I long to just have this as my little space to present all the things I love, and the things that happen. It won’t be an ‘all laid bare’ affair, of course, but I am always open about the things I feel happy to be open about.

Of course, blogging is not my sole means of writing. I think ever since I was a little girl, I longed to have a book published. I have memories of… getting very hyperfixated on the Tudors in year 8, going to the library and photocopying all of the information and images I could find and basically scrapbooking them into a booklet I made myself out of paper my dad had brought home from his job at the printing press. I was so proud of that thing, I’d made a book! It makes me chuckle thinking back on it because of course that’s not quite what I mean when I say I want to write a book these days, but the sparks were there. They just got a little dimmed for a time, certain older people telling me I wasn’t any good at it and the general ability to force yourself to do something that is so hard that you just can’t see yourself ever being any good at (thanks ADHD). But with the years comes wisdom. You learn how other writers ply their craft, you note what they do that’s so good, what others do that isn’t, and you practice. Oh lordy is that something I had no concept of in my youth. Practice.

So late last year I got into a little Witcher hyperfixation, as one does, and I started planning out a fan-fiction about how Jaskier (I’m kind of mixing show/game/book canon as it suits me, fan-fiction is fun that way) finds himself with the spark of Wild Magic. Yep, like in Dungeons & Dragons. A Wild Magic Sorceror. And he does not understand how to wield this power and it backfires on him. A lot. I didn’t get super far into it but I had started plotting it, and writing a couple of scenes here and there and you know what? I really like what I’ve got. However the hyperfixation scattered and then I became overwhelmed because well… every time I have a story idea, I note it down. And by this point in time my ideas log is massive, and that’s overwhelming! How do I choose what I’m in the right mindset for? Which one is right for me to start with?

Anyway long story short I’m not starting with any of those juicy horror ideas I have, I’m plotting out an epic fantasy series I need to worldbuild for and plan so many different details and research and learn. But when something is right, it’s just right, isn’t it? And I truly think this was always where I was meant to start. By cannibalising all of my previous high fantasy worlds, characters, and ideas and churning them together in a great big stew pot to write a story that I believe will be a lot of fun to write. Will it be what people want to read? Will it be worth publishing? I have no idea, but you truly have to write what lights you up and feels right. Those are the best stories. And hey, it probably won’t be that great at first, while it’s not technically my first book³ it’s been so long since I wrote anything that I almost feel like I’m completely new at this and so I am treating it that way.

I have a couple non-fiction books on writing to read through and work through, a bunch of YouTube videos to do the same with (including a series of lectures by Brandon Sanderson I’m very excited for, I listen to a 3 hour long podcast interview he did recently and I learned quite a bit from that!). I’m researching history, starting to pull in all of my old notes to sort through and turn into something great and yes, I probably will worldbuild “too much” but I find it very helpful to know what’s in the world and where to know what might happen within it, what’s at stake when it’s threatened, who responds to such things. Perhaps learning about fantasy worldbuilding from D&D wasn’t the best for this but it is what it is!

So yeah. That’s… half a year’s worth of life, haha. I would dearly like to post here a little more than I have been. I’ve been having some revelations about social media and where I share things to and the websites I interact with and rely on and I think I’d really like to utilise my blog more. After all, this is my space! Not subject to the whims of others. It does take up time and energy I rarely have but keeping things chill and lowkey should hopefully help with that. I’m not sure how consistent I will be, or frequent, but I’m going to see what I can do. And sort out my Feedly to make it easier for me to check on my favourite blogs from friends and others. That said, I would love to hear your favourite blogs, and if you keep a blog, anything that might be relevant to my interests, you know? Feel free to drop a comment, I’ll keep an eye on my spam folder!

Onwards to the next adventure!

1. and I was going to add in a second one but I spent so long putting off finishing going through all the releases coming out to see what I was most interested in that well… we’re in month three now so perhaps it’s a little outdated for now [↩]
2. and holy shit the upcharge costs on hotels for things like this are fucking ridiculous… [↩]
3. my first book was a 50,000 word story I wrote for NaNoWriMo in 2012, it was absolutely terrible and no I will not be bringing that one out but yes I do still have it, I do not throw things away [↩]