Here's recent progress on my subtropical (art)deco mystery about a young medium in a historic spiritualist community teaming up with a shell-shocked haberdasher who's receiving love notes from hell ... as inspired by a real place and a real set of bizarre (otherworldly?) incidents:

Project: Brimstone
Deadline: March 15, 2016
New words written: 9051
Present total word count: 99,551 [Draft Zero



Things Accomplished in Fiction: Big spooky climax; wind-down; some fiddling.

Things Accomplished in Real Life: Neighborhood jaunts with Greyson; took eldercat to vet; performed the IV fluids on the cat in question in the presence of a professional, and now I know we can do it at home; went and got my hair trimmed up ahead of my trip to Dahlonega this weekend; answered a crap-ton of emails.

Deadline Other: Yes, the draft is a little shorter than I expected - but it's WHOLE. I'll let it sit over the weekend, clean it up Monday and Tuesday, and send it off Tuesday night. When rewrites come around it'll probably plump up somewhat.

Bonus Other: If you scroll down to the bottom of this post, you'll see that I've written over 90,000 words since January 1. That's not quite a record for me, but that's a lot for me to handle in 9 weeks. I kind of want to sleep for a month, but HAHAHAHAHAHA that is not going to happen. So. Yeah.

Next Up Other: I have a number of things coming down the pike - some are production things (edits/etc. on The Family Plot, rewrite things (The Agony House - beginning any day now), proposal things (something on deck I can't talk about yet, but will eat a lot of time), group projects in process of which I'm not supposed to speak yet, a short story that will require some research but is very important to me, and oh yeah, I have to finish writing The Toll before November. So don't worry. I'll stay busy. I have no choice.

Dog Other: Playdate with Luna!



Cat Other: Remember when this? Now this.





Number of fiction words so far this year: 90,177