I’m going to spend most of the day making Christmas treats: chocolate fudge, Christmas crack, and snickerdoodles. For some reason, my fudge has been too dry for years, and I still don’t know why. I’ve been making some changes to the recipe, with no luck. This year, I’m using different chips. If that doesn’t work, I might try using different chips and proper butter (basically, wondering if the candy doesn’t have enough fat, due to recipe changes in chocolate chips and standard butter). If that doesn’t work, I guess I just accept that it’s going to be dry. It’s still really tasty.

News:

“Weed Killer” is featured in the first e-book from Horrific Scribes, Invasions of World, Home, Body, and Mind. No paperback, because they don’t have the contract rights for that, but a full anthology.

Works in Progress:

Quite unexpectedly, I finished the edits for In the Dollhouse We All Wait yesterday. The second half had the book’s natural momentum going in its favor. Among smaller issues, I tend to start too many sentences with ‘and’ and ‘but,’ and I write very long sentences (just how my brain works). These are known flaws. I get rid of a lot of them in my own edits, but apparently not enough.

So not only did I get the Dollhouse edits done well before Christmas, I can work on the Dracula reimagining fixes and May Cooler Heads Prevail edits. And just generally, I can take it a little easy for the rest of the month. Good, because work will probably be more demanding through Christmas Eve. I plan on taking some work days off next week, though, in addition to Christmas Day and at least part of Christmas Eve.

I’m not sure when May Cooler Heads Prevail will come out, though, because my cover artist’s house burned up. If you want to help someone really important in the indie horror community, check out that link to the fundraiser for him.

Books I’m Reading:

Raising Loki: A Memoir by Elliot Manarin
Rose Madder by Stephen King
The Shining by Stephen King

Things I’m Listening To:

Christmas playlist

Things I’m Watching:

Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery
Single All the Way
Is It Cake? Holiday series (finished)
9-1-1: Nashville series
Ghosts (US) series
Transplant series
CSI: NY series
Twelve Dates ’til Christmas series
Holiday Baking Championship series
Sweet Empire: Winter Wars series
Great British Baking Show series

Poem of the Week:

So I stand before
a row of sins as salty
as the remains of Lot’s wife
sprinkled on Eve’s first fruit.
They snap and snarl
and surround me with a crowd,
but all I know how to do
is surround them back in hungry arms,
because they know not what they do
or why they weep to be held.