“July, July, July… it never seemed so strange!” — The Decemberists

Oh July. Hard to believe you’re already winding down. But I’m glad you are!

July has been an incredibly busy month for me, because I decided I was gonna finish my new novel this month. Usually I crash and burn on these sort of challenges, but thanks to the other writers from last year’s Master Class who are in on the challenge, and send daily updates of all they’ve done, I’ve stuck to it. I’ve written every day so far this month but two.

And I’ve shattered my previous best word count month already — I’m at almost 32,000 words, or 126 pages for the month. With four writing days left! (I had about 40,000 words already written, so I’m not writing the whole book in a month, by the way.)

I should be done with this book by Saturday. Or else I’m gonna be peeved.

Not a bad way to end a month that started out so crappy. July 1st was the day Zuda shut down, taking our webcomic IN MAPS & LEGENDS with it. Ugh. Not cool.

But I’ve also been busy on that front as well, working behind-the-scenes with artist extraordinaire Niki Smith to remedy the lack of MAPS goodness available to the world. Some exciting stuff to report to you, but can’t say boo yet.

Just keep your eyes peeled for news, and hey — keep your fingers crossed as well. Since you’re at it.

As busy as this month has been, it’s been a really good month. I always enjoy my day more when I start it out doing something for ME — in this case, writing new words.

And I even managed to get a good bit of writing done while I was heavily medicated last week! I had the first cavity of my life earlier this year, in one of my wisdom teeth, so I finally made the appointment to get all four of them yanked. Ugh.

All I can say is — if you have to have teeth pulled, bring earplugs. The cracking sound… it’ll haunt me forever!

I had to get a pic of my X-ray for Drew, so I thought I’d share it here with you:

Just imagine that mouth minus the big chompers in the back. I now have -4 Wisdom!

In other news, we’ve been taking the boys to the neighborhood pool a LOT, and Drew has just about figured out the whole swimming thing. He does a mean doggy paddle. And Mitch is perfectly content to put on his water wings and fiddle around in the water in the big pool along with us.

And the extra added bonus is that all the exercise knocks ’em out at the end of the day.

Also, Mr. Mitch has decided he wants to potty-train himself. So far, he’s batting about .600. It helps that he gets a Jelly Belly or two (also known as “gum-gum!”) every time he visits the bathroom to leave a deposit. We need to buy Jelly Belly stock.

Now, if we could just train both boys to sleep until at LEAST seven a.m. Man, they are killing Elizabeth and me with this early rising. Don’t know where they get that from… (okay, so I got up at 3 a.m. today, but that was abnormal — usually it’s 4:45)

Finally, I wanted to end with this lovely photo from the boys’ Aunt Bebe, who did the scrapbooking treatment to this image from the beach at the Outer Banks. Drew and Mitch!