Welcome back for another round of challenge responses! I'm also happy to announce I'm freshening up my blog. :) I was getting tired of seeing the same photos over and over again. I'm also changing up a couple of the pages to hopefully make the site more efficient and less cluttered. More about that in this post. Read on!

I've been keeping busy with reading and writing and home school activities. I'm so busy, in fact, that I keep thinking I've missed something important. I know I haven't met all the goals I set for myself this month. I still have some time but I don't know whether I'll make it in the end. I still haven't got a map for book two. The world map is still not revamped to fix the mistakes. And I'm still in limbo about whether my cover works as it stands or not. But I'm keeping up with my challenges and we're back on track with school. I think those count as victories. :)
Read on to see my responses for the past four days of the challenge.

Today, I have two super short reviews for you. I think I was probably in a hurry and very tired when I wrote them. I did enjoy the books, though. Cynthia Woolf is a solid romance author in the more secular sense. Don't forget to check her page out on Goodreads! Read on to see the reviews in full.

Dear readers, I have some exciting news to share with you. Sign up for my newsletter if you don't want to miss it. You can do that by scrolling to the bottom of any page on my website.
Now, on to the challenge responses from the past weekend!

Madness and mayhem have been the order of the day for the past week. I'm feeling so overwhelmed as I attempt to push through the final days of senior year for my oldest daughter and eighth grade for my younger one. Writing has been necessarily put aside for this month and possibly half of the next. But I'll continue with writing challenges because they are helping to keep my story and the possibilities running rampant within it flowing through my thoughts. Read on to see how I responded to the past week's challenges.

I got an exciting email from Amber Argyle the other day. She and several other authors got together and offered their newsletter subscribers the opportunity to download one book from each of them. Free! What reader can resist the lure of free books? So I check out the list. I downloaded all but two and the one from Amber Argyle that I already owned, read, and reviewed.
Today's book review is on my first choice from the reading stack - The Royal Companion by Tanya Bird.

I have a lot to share and so I'll get to it as quickly as I possibly can. I've been doing all kinds of busy things this month. The dream of creating a soundtrack for my books is getting closer, so it seems. I'll keep y'all updated on that as more information comes to light. Our family took a weekend trip down to New Orleans, which was lots of fun. I may share some of the photos with you on Monday if I have time to prepare them this weekend.
For now, though, let's get to those challenge responses!

Poetry really isn't my thing, though I do try to read it from time to time. I've written song lyrics before and while they are similar, they're not the same. I admire people who can do it and those who aren't afraid to share those pieces of their soul. Read on to check out my review of S.D. Whitefeather's poetry collection. (It's the first book I won in April.)

May is upon us! I'm only slightly surprised at how fast April flew by. I knew Camp Nano would speed things along for me. I met and exceeded my Nano goal, so that's a win. And I completed the three challenges I started on April 1st. I thought for a while, I wouldn't be able to complete one of the challenges because it was a writing prompt. But then I realized, there were no limits on /what/ could be written for that prompt. Read on to find out more about that and the new May challenge.

I'm super excited to share these new finds with you today: "Knockout Girl" and Standup Guy" by Natasja Eby are truly good books. I've moved them into my top faves. I don't often win anything, but I've won two free books this month and "Knockout Girl" was one of them. I enjoyed it so much, I bought the sequel, "Standup Guy." Read on to check out my reviews for each of them on Goodreads.