News:

My Crystal Lake Shallow Waters entry for this month’s Resurrection theme, “Second Chance,” has been posted on the Patreon. ($5/month, basically a themed anthology every month)

I’ll be wandering around Texas Frightmare in Dallas this weekend. I love it because I’m surrounded by a bunch of people who share my enthusiasms and aesthetic, but my introvert self has to brace for the muchness of everything.

Works in Progress:

I wanted to finish editing In the Dollhouse We All Wait before Texas Frightmare, and I did yesterday. Second round of edits went much faster, and I write synopses during second edits, so that’s done and dusted, too. I’m continuing to do really well in my first round of edits, which allows the second round to be swifter, strictly polish. All I have left is to put together the long and short pitches, but the manuscript itself is ready to sub. There aren’t a lot of markets for extreme horror, but maybe PitDark will find a place for it.

My other goal was to get it below the 90K-word max of a lot of small press sub calls. I cut it down from 116,160 words in the first draft to 88,636 at the end of the third draft. That seems like a lot to trim, but my usual novel word cut is about 20-25%, so it’s not too far off—a little more than average.

I have the Dollhouse pitches to write, and then I have two short stories I’d like to tackle. After that, I start on the professional edits for Crooked House. I’m still not sure if I can afford to pay for my series standard formatting, but we’ll see what June brings.

Books I’m Reading:

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

Things I’m Listening To:

RAIGN
Joseph William Morgan
The Silicone Veil by Susanne Sundfor
Fumbling Towards Ecstasy by Sarah McLachlan
Arcadia by Eurielle
The Unknown by Sea Stars
When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go by Billie Eilish
YouTube ambient tracks
Metal soundtracks

Things I’m Watching:

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990)
The Taking of Deborah Logan
The Meg 2: The Trench
The Pope’s Exorcist
CSI: Miami series
CSI: NY series
American Idol series
9-1-1 series
Jeopardy Masters series
Hometown series
Murder, She Wrote series

Poem of the Week:

what have we here, hidden
beneath branch and planted weed,
obscured with brush and scattered seed?
where have we come, unbidden,
and where does this winding path lead?
what kind of man conceals a bad deed,
and when does a path turn forbidden?