You’ve got to understand, it’s been SO HOT, y’all. So hot that normal late summer weather seems cool and refreshingly beautiful. This morning has been near perfect. Woke up early for pickleball (not crazy about the early, but it’s not terrible) during which the breeze seemed autumnal in comparison to the hot barely-breezes of the last few months, and I played pretty decently (last time a few weeks ago, I didn’t play well at all). Came home to dip in the cold water of the spa; it wasn’t even eighty outside yet. But after all this hot, being cold feels amazing, so I didn’t even mind. I read out there for an hour and could have stayed longer. Then straight into a hot shower that felt so good after the cold dip.

My cold has kicked my butt, but I’ve finally reached the tail end of it. I don’t sound good after all the coughing, but I feel so much better, so now the symptoms are just a nuisance and I can properly enjoy things again. Like the extra day off I took yesterday to help me get ahead on my writing, since I was going to be on vacation this week anyway. (We had to cancel.)

It’s been a while since I had a really good day. I’m probably going to crash here soon and need a nap, because I’m middle-aged, but damn, it’s been a good day so far.

News:

I got notice that my editor at Quill & Crow was going to start working on Masque soon, which is another reason I want to get ahead on this rewrite project. Once she’s finished with it, I’ll get to work. I’ll probably be working on it over my birthday. I can’t think of anything better. It’s slated to come out in 2027. Exciting, y’all!

Works in Progress:

The We Follow You in the Dark rewrite is galloping along at a terrific pace these last few days off, which has brought me to 48K words. I’m aiming for 53K by the end of the day. About seventy-five percent of it is adjusted transcription, following my new characters’ impulses and making small adjustments off the original text. But I’ve added about 10K of fully new text. If my patterns persist, I’ll probably cut about twenty percent of that off in edits. That means my final product will probably be longer than 60K words, which makes it a better length for a short novel than it started.

I’m expecting to finish the rewrite at about 65-70K words, though, which means I probably won’t finish by the end of the month, but the point of the extra day off yesterday was to get that completion date as close to the beginning of October as possible. I have two works to read in order to give some blurbs (the first time they’ve ever been requested from me) and want to get those done before the Masque edits begin.

Based on timing, I will probably not get to start The Twelfth Wife, which means that’ll be a 2027 project, along with an edit that I’m not talking about yet (even though I signed the contract), the rest of the Masque edits, and the next Thorns novel, which makes 2027 pretty dang heavy. I promised Totally Entwined a trilogy of short supernatural novels under my other name, and I need to get started on that probably after finishing the Masque edit, which adds more contractual edits to next year. Writing those novels should take me through the rest of this year, although I’m hoping to do a few short things in between. Still got some essays to knock off my list.

Books I’m Reading:

The Jackal Man by Russell C. Connor
The Violence by Delilah S. Dawson
The Deep by Nick Cutter

Things I’m Listening To:

Let’s Hear It for the Girls playlist
Halloween playlist

Things I’m Watching:

Pulse (2005)
Weapons
Monster Squad
Glass Onion
Halloween Baking Championship series
Best Medicine series
Criminal Minds series
The Closer series
America’s Got Talent series
Hawaii Five-O series
The Following series

Poem of the Week: (throwback from Sept 2022)

necromantic sighs under stormy skies
a bloody rose for the soulless
and shelley stones to roll over
if you need a helping hand
there are plenty to choose from
and diamonds to spare
for a pair of ghoulish hearts