What Are You Reading? July 2026 Edition

This month was busy, but I’ve been getting closer to the rhythm of things that I want. Let’s hope it continues. 🤞 Putting my reading accountability out there helps … me.

Two new books this month! 🥳 Because I finished two. I’ve gotta hurry up, though, I’m [still] not tracking toward my 52-book goal. 😐

• ❤️‍🩹 The Revolutionary Trauma Release Process 15% [Morning Meditation]

• 🎧 Cinnamon Bun #7 25% [Obligatory Audio Book]

• ✍️ The Emotional Craft of Fiction 61% [Professional Development]

• 😈 Reverie (Hellgate Chronicles #2) 50% [Obligatory Fiction]

🏹 I’m also “secretly” re-reading The Hunger Games because we’re using it as the masterwork for the first Scene Stormers scene writing cohort in September. More details about that below. I’m on Chapter 16 now and still crying about Rue. 😭 We’ve been refining our curriculum, rehearsing our slides, and preparing to start marketing in earnest very soon. Sign up for the waiting list if you’re interested in one of the limited spots … when all twenty are gone, they’re gone.

My new morning meditation is The Revolutionary Trauma Release Process because I’ve begun exploring somatic therapies as a path forward for my insomnia. It’s weird, but it’s worked remarkably well for me so far. I just need to reinforce the anchor habits that keep the practice going.

I’m back for installment number seven of my favorite cozy LitRPG, Cinnamon Bun. The author and the narrator are great. 💝 I luv Broccoli Bunch and her gang.

Everything by Donald Maass is amazing. The Emotional Craft of Fiction is doubly so. He takes on the “myth” of internality-is-bad and advocates for precisely the opposite. Love it! 🔥

I could’ve sworn that I read this one before, but … My Brilliant Minds book club forced me to pull it out of my bottomless TBR pit and realize that I have not read it before. 🤯

It’s hard to believe that Reverie is only book two of the Hellgate Chronicles by my best frenemy Jocelyn Lindsay (it’s an enneagram Eight thing—you wouldn’t understand), but I suspect that’s because I’ve also read Diana’s prequel and Allison’s novella. I love ‘em so much. 😈

I’m always looking for good books to add to my endless To Be Read list.

Drop a comment and tell me what I should add to my list next!

🍪 Paid subscribers get a free cookie invitation to a thirty-minute consultation with me about whatever they like every month. We can talk about whatever you like.

📅 Paid subscribers also get an hour-long unrecorded group deep dive conversation every month via zoom. In August 2026, we’ll be talking about implementing John Truby’s Four Corner Opposition in your novel. In September, we’ll talk about the combustion phase of your scenes and novels and how to escalate them by design. In October, we’ll be singing the backstory blues and how to interview your imaginary friends and enemies.

Beginning in September 2026, several of my favorite peers and I will begin teaching a six-week scene writing bootcamp that we are affectionately branding as Scene Stormers. We will be discussing the well-known fundamentals of fiction writing that all the cool kids since Aristotle first wrote down that stories need a beginning, a muddle (my term), and an end in The Poetics and we will be giving you human-generated feedback on your scenes.

We (Scene Stormers) are currently assembling our curriculum and we will be publishing it all in advance, because (Spoiler Alert! ⚠️) there are no secrets in storytelling. The primary value that we provide to you (our customers) is the weekly discussions during the six-week bootcamp and the one-on-one human feedback on your writing every week.

📚 For the inaugural workshop, we’re using Hunger Games as our masterwork.

📅 If you’d like to be invited to our inaugural bootcamp in September, sign up now. The inaugural cohort will only accept 20 writers … if you want to be in the one and only Mockingjay Cohort.