News:

My story “Wandering Lights,” about a small town’s post-trick-or-treat ritual, gets second life as a finalist for this month’s Dark Festivities theme at Crystal Lake’s Shallow Waters flash fiction contest. ($5/month tier and up). The original printing was in Halloween Horrors: 13 Tales of Terror, which is free on Kindle Unlimited.

A Coup of Owls Press is trying to drum up backers for their novelette anthologies, and they’re struggling in part because of the US tariffs and customs issues. In sharing what they’re aiming for, they provided some insight into my gritty, grimy, glorious goddess-at-a-gloryhole story Glory to God, which is part of their Dark Paths anthology. If you’d like to help the press out, check out their Kickstarter.

Works in Progress:

I’m at 55K words, aiming for 58K words by the end of the day. I keep upping the anticipated end word count. I’m at 110K now.

I wrote out single-word sections of the book before I started, my version of an outline. There are a total of eight. For some reason I’ve only completed two at this point, and that concerns me greatly. Sure, some of the sections are probably shorter than others, but I’m still worried. I always overwrite in the first draft because of how I warm up into writing. On working days, I’m writing 1K words, but it can take me 500 words to properly warm up, and then before you know it, I’m done for the day and have to do other things. (The warm-up words are not necessarily useless; I’m just more likely to meander while I figure out my direction. I get good stuff out of that sometimes, but not always.) But is the ambitiousness of the story going to take me to Thorns-level first-draft word counts? I feel like I don’t have time for this.

On the other hand, glad that I’m able to write at all in this madness, so… And the story has continued to entertain me, although I’m still afraid it’s too ambitious and won’t stick the landing. It took me years of rewrites to figure out Nocturne, years before I was confident enough to tackle Masque, years before the Dracula reimagining worked the second time around. I’m at the point in my writing career that I’m trying to take on the more complicated stories floating around my head, but I may still not quite be there for everything.

On the other other hand, though, I start to lose patience with not being close to the end of a novel by about this point, a month out. Over two months is pushing it. I wonder if I can get myself to push my daily word count on working days to 1.5-2K…

Books I’m Reading:

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

Things I’m Listening To:

Halloween playlist

Things I’m Watching:

Ready or Not
SWAT series
Hannibal series
Where Whatever the F You Want series (finished)
All Creatures Great and Small series
America’s Got Talent series
CSI series
CSI: NY series
Halloween Baking Championship series

Poem of the Week: (throwback to 2023)

i would never be accused of
wallowing in my own sorrow
but may i render this ground
unhallowed with dripping salt
seeping into the ground soil
downhill of the cursed gallows
from where the mortician carries
my son to grave upon the morrow