News:

“Mirror Writing” posted for the Shallow Waters theme of “Archival Horror” at Crystal Lake’s Patreon. It was not a hit, unfortunately.

Works in Progress:

I removed Meridian from my pinned folders, since I won’t need an easy way to get there anymore. End of an era.

I did the edits for a short story coming out soon. I also received a wonderful rejection from a dream publisher for my cli-fi story. Basically, it was too much on the long side, and they can’t take those very often, but they didn’t want me to cut it down just to fit because they liked the story so much. I think I’ll probably put it out myself, because it’s too long for short story calls and too short for novelette calls—and frankly, too sexy for everything. The eroticism is thematic, not really intended as erotica, but it pushes the limits for speculative submission calls. Like May Cooler Heads Prevail, it’s short enough that I can afford the cost of the edit. I’ll save it for next year, though.

Weather threw me off all week, including feeling like I had to move my day off from Wednesday to Tuesday. The irony is that everything I was careful with didn’t happen, but I nearly got caught in some serious but unforecasted pop-up storms on Monday.

I didn’t get much work done this week, since I’m still recovering from the first quarter. My brain has been having more difficulty with memory and finding words, usually a good sign to rest.

I’ll start on what are hopefully the last fixes for the Dracula reimagining today. I discovered that past me did the last fix in Word’s Track Changes just to see my own editing process and how many changes were actually made, so I won’t have to have two documents up while I try to reverse some of the changes I made in the last round that I decided didn’t work. I can just reject the edits. Way to go, past me! This shouldn’t take too long. Now if I could just figure out what to do with the novel itself…

Books I’m Reading:

Skeleton Crew by Stephen King

Things I’m Listening To:

Singalong playlist
Taylor Swift

Things I’m Watching: (As you can see, I’m doing my annual rewatch of the Saw movies, albeit out of order. Why is this series so compelling to me?)

Saw IV
Saw V
Saw VI
Him
Home Town series
Hoarding: Buried Alive series
NCIS series
Tracker series

Poem of the Week: (throwback to May 2022)

coddle don’t curdle
hear ‘stead of hurdle
sow what’s not sour
do how’s not dour
what wake we weak
and south we seek
leaves little brown leaves
and slips from our sleeves
what always ails
like fallen frails
in dusk to dust
meets we must