We got a solid few inches of rain over the last few days. All our trees are tired and turning, a lot of grass is brown, but you could practically hear the collective sigh from all the plants. I fortunately didn’t have to work through the worst of it.

News:

Nothing this week.

Works in Progress:

I didn’t update yesterday because I really wanted to double down on finishing We Follow You in the Dark rewrites on Friday (it’s my last weekend day this week, and I’m working out more now that this cold has finally subsided, and that means less night time available for writing). I got so close to finishing, 5K unique words, because the ending of the novel really had to change for the new concept. Then after my workout my mind was still spinning, so I took advantage of it and finished the novel late in the night.

It ended up a little under 73K words, which is about 18K more than the original version. I think edits will cut it down to about 65-68K, but I need a break before diving into those. Much of the novel is functionally transcription from the original, so I don’t think edits will take as long, but I already know there’s some smoothing out that needs to happen.

I’ll be reading two books for blurbs this week, then maybe trying another essay. If I can, I’ll start on WFYITD edits until I get the Masque edits in. Hard to know what October looks like until those come in.

Books I’m Reading:

The Jackal Man by Russell C. Connor
The Violence by Delilah S. Dawson
The Deep by Nick Cutter (finished, added to the tiny list of books that made me cry)

Things I’m Listening To:

Let’s Hear It for the Girls playlist
Halloween playlist

Things I’m Watching:

Oculus
Garage Sale Mysteries: Murder Takes the Stage
The Mothman Prophecies
American Horror Story: Cult series
Halloween Baking Championship series
Kitchen Nightmare (reboot) series
Best Medicine series (finished)
Brilliant Minds series
Ghosts (US) series
Criminal Minds series
The Closer series
The Hunting Party series
America’s Got Talent series (finished)
The Following series

Poem of the Week: (throwback from Oct 2022)

a dripping cryptic sign
in a decrepit crypt
decrypt the claw marks
livid inscription
to determine the cryptid