News:

I experience reverse SAD (seasonal affective disorder), which means that as the days get longer and hotter, my sensitivity to heat and light intensifies my mood disorder. The first warm breezes and sweaty walks of the year make me grumpy, while the first cool breezes and cold nights in October bring me joy. So whenever I feel unsettled or cranky for no reason around this time of year, I have to remind myself I’m adjusting to my new reality for the next six months. It usually hits in May, but it’s come in April this time.

I had a job interview earlier this week. The job itself seems promising, and I think it went well. I stress about interviews for a day beforehand, then have a hard time winding down after. By the time I got home afterward about thirty minutes later, I was still answering interview questions in my car right in front of my house, talking to nobody. However, after two decent interviews, I think I’ll be less terrified of them going forward. So far, I haven’t had any weird, random questions that are hard to answer because they’re out of left field. It’s all fairly straightforward, and now that I’ve worked in an office before, I have a better idea what questions to ask. I have trouble coming up with questions of my own when I don’t have enough information to know what to ask. I don’t know what I don’t know, you know?

In addition to a job interview, I had a book interview with Citywide Blackout last night on Question Not My Salt. I had a really good time and got to talk about extreme horror, about what Saw traps say about human survival instinct, and about the different kinds of cannibalism in the genre. I’ll provide the link to it next week, but it should pop up on the site tomorrow.

My workplace horror flash fiction “Eye Spy,” about mystical micromanagement, posted on the Crystal Lake Patreon earlier this week.

In other news, I watched the Nightmare on Elm Street movie series for the first time in release order (except the reboot, which I watched first). I hadn’t seen the second NOES before. So now I’ve seen them all, and it feels like an accomplishment. Also, I’ve been working on watching The Mentalist for years and finally got the last two seasons under my belt. It’s such a comfort show to me, and it was nice to finish. House and/or Criminal Minds might be next.

Works in Progress:

Thank goodness, Tooth & Claw seems to be the solution to my Book 7 problem. So, among the changes I made between restarts, just in case it’s useful to you: First, a change in tense from present to past. Then, a change in protagonist from Lis to Tara as primary and Lis as secondary (multiple POVs, which has precedent in the Meridian series). Last, changing where I start the story.

Those are all pretty much par for the course when trying to figure out what does and doesn’t work: tense, POV, who the protagonist should be, and where the story starts. It just usually doesn’t take me 50K words I can’t use to get there. However, by end of day today, I’ll have reached 50K good words in two weeks, at 5K or more words a day, except for my job interview day. Being able to maintain that word count is proof that this version is working, because in the last two versions, I struggled with 3K a day and I didn’t look forward to getting to work each morning.

In addition, I’ve been working on poetry, and I edited and submitted a short story to a submission call in the breaks between my writing. I like to write 500 words at a time and have a little treat in between, especially during higher word count days that can end up creatively exhausting. Sometimes that treat is a page or two of editing. Sometimes it’s editing or writing a poem. Sometimes it’s fifteen to twenty minutes of a low-concentration movie or show. Even these update sections are a break from my work!

It’s similar to the Pomodoro Technique, which suggests that intervals of work are more effective than marathons. I call them my In-and-Outs. Some days that sounds dirtier than others, depending on the content of my writing.

Books I’m Reading:

Killing Time by Russell C. Connor
Pocket Apocalypse by Seanan McGuire

Things I’m Listening To:

YouTube playlists
Singer-songwriter playlists
Metal playlists

Things I’m Watching:

A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors
A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master
A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child
Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare
New Nightmare
Freddy v. Jason
Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2022)
The Mentalist series (finished)
NCIS series
NCIS: Hawai’i series
CSI: Miami series
American Idol series
Spring Baking Championship series
Murder, She Wrote series

Poem of the Week: (throwback to April 2023)

field mouse in search of shelter
inspects daisies and daffodils,
dandelions and clover, none a fit
cushion for her tiny girth,
finally settles on the fairy bed
of a pink tulip, pollen gilding
her humble fur with apian gold.