(ETA: Things I’m Reading, Listening To, and Watching, slipped my mind)

News:

Nothing much this week to share. I did forget to write last week that in addition to what I worked on then, I also put together some promotional material for Question Not My Salt that I’ll be sharing on social media in October and November, since QNMS is a holiday-specific story. I, for one, love watching holiday-specific horror at certain times of the year.

I was trying to create deliberately dated graphics for some cheesy material, like old Thanksgiving newsletters in elementary school or Sunday school bulletin boards. Even so, I probably shouldn’t quit my dayjob. Oh, wait…

In that respect, I have nothing to report, and this fills me with simultaneous dread and despair. The job market is the worst it’s been for a while, so I know it’s not entirely my fault, but I’m not sure exactly when I need to lower my standards, and when I do, how much worse will I feel when they don’t want me either.

I write so that I’m doing something, working hard every day, but I know I’m not the only one experiencing a publication slump as well while the anthology and magazine markets dry up, and I ran through all my self-publication budget.

I have a great support system that other people don’t have. As long as I don’t get seriously sick (which is what I’m afraid of), I should be okay. But it’s still scary. I had a plan, but I always have a plan, and you know what they say about hindsight.

I have also killed two large cockroaches in the last two days without completely losing my shit. Please clap.

Works in Progress:

I think I’ll be able to finish The Damp either tonight or by early afternoon tomorrow. Rather than a novelette, I’m a little over 40K and approaching 50K words—much longer than I thought it would be and planned for—but I don’t think I’ll go over. During edits, I’ll probably shoot to get word count under 40K so that it’s a long novella rather than a very short novel. I might have a market or two to submit it to later. I’m happy with its weirdness. I sometimes feel like I’m not weird enough, but I’ll occasionally hit a good minor chord.

After The Damp is done, I’ll take the weekend off to rest, then proceed to work on the Dracula reimagining (henceforth DRI, because I feel like the title is a bit of a spoiler that I’m not ready to give). I’m nervous about writing in a different way, but I don’t anticipate it’ll be a long novel. I’m aiming for finishing before the end of the September, which will hopefully give me enough time to edit The Damp and Masque before end of October, although if I’m given Book & Candle (Meridian 5) first edits, that’ll require an adjustment to the schedule.

However, after NaNoWriMo’s massive missteps over the last year, I will not officially be doing NNWM this year, so it’s not like I have to block off November like usual, as long as I finish a novel in that month, which I can still do with a dayjob and even more easily without.

Things I’m Reading:

Why Didn’t You Just Leave edited by Nadia Bulkin and Julia Rios
Needful Things by Stephen King

Things I’m Listening To:

Haley Reinhart
Hollywood’s Greatest Themes by Tina Guo
Silent Hill: Revelation soundtrack
Stigmata soundtrack
Nightwish instrumentals

Things I’m Watching:

Jumanji
The Nun II
Pandorum
Crossword Mysteries series
Curious Caterer series
Unsolved Mysteries (Netflix) series
Abbott Elementary series
White Collar series
Supernatural series
Grey’s Anatomy series
Kitchen Nightmares series
America’s Got Talent series
Murder, She Wrote series

Poem of the Week: (after today, I’ll be using a previous year’s flash poems, since I’ll be working on longer poems this month)

i see through your eyes
the silent witness pulling strings
an alternative perspective
clearer sight parasite
whispering truths from the other side
of your convenient entrance ear