The week has simply flown by and now Friday night is here again and I am only just keeping ahead of my upload schedule. I lost so much momentum over the holidays, then got sick and lost even more, and now it’s like running in Jello trying to catch up.

Every book hits that point were it stops being this marvelous creative process and turns into work, and for me, Part Three hit that point about two and a half months ago. The me that could write thirty pages in a day has become the me that needs a whole week to write a 10-15 page chapter. Still not done with this book and Part Two only has four more chapters to go. Ugh. Every week, I tell myself sternly that I cannot keep dragging my feet. Every week, I put in 6-8 hours a day of what sure as hell feels like writing, editing and refining. And every week, I am astonished to find that I have only managed to finish one more chapter. What the hell, me?

However, I only have another chapter or two to go, so as long as I keep even this sorry pace going, I’ll be able to keep the uploads coming without breaking between books. And even better, once I finally get Part Three to bed, I can move on to Part Four and it’ll turn back into fun. Until then, all I can do is keep it moving. So in that defeatist spirit, please enjoy this excerpt from my FNAF fanfiction, Everything Is All Right, Part Two: Mike Schmidt and the Long Night, which you can find over at fanfiction.net and archiveofourown.org.

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“Following the unsolved disappearance of Billy Blaylock and the tragic accident that befell poor Maria Osgoode, Fredbear’s Diner closed in August of 1967 and never opened again,” said Mike, passing over a newspaper clipping to prove it from his binder of never-ending sorrow. “But the building stayed. Never renovated. Never leased. Never torn down. The springtraps were supposedly scrapped—”

“Supposedly?”

“We’ll get to that, I promise. The springtraps were gone, but the diner was still in working order and, as the hype surrounding Maria Osgoode’s death faded, a lot of kids and their parents started looking forward to a grand re-opening. The kid kept pretty close-mouthed about his plans, but at the annual Christmas tree lighting ceremony, the new and improved Fazbear Band made their first appearance, singing carols, dancing with the kids, and mingling with the audience. When the kid ended the party by announcing the impending opening of Freddy Fazbear’s Pizzeria, the roof damn near blew off with the cheers.”

He started up the car and drove. North to High Road, east three miles, as remote as the first site in its own way. She couldn’t really see how it was a better location. It didn’t even have a strip mall, just the restaurant and a parking lot, surrounded by trees. The resemblance to ‘her’ pizzeria was strong in that sense—the isolation, the quiet—especially when it came to bouncing over the broken asphalt, slapping grass that grew in the cracks and dipping in and out of mudholes, but the building itself was nothing special. Still, with restaurants, as with people, it was what was on the inside that counted.

“In February of 1968, the first real Freddy Fazbear’s Pizzeria opened,” said Mike, parking before the boarded-up doors. “With a couple big changes, some obvious, some very much behind the scenes. The biggest change of all wasn’t the name over the awning, but the name on the paychecks: Fazbear Entertainment, Incorporated. CEO, Fredrich Faust. Vice-President, Viktor Metzger. Stock options were made available. That had to have been Metzger’s idea, since by this time, his only source of income came from managing the restaurants, while the kid was making money in his sleep on patents he’d sold before his nuts dropped. Even so, the kid was smart enough to maintain a controlling interest in Fazbear Entertainment and he’s never sold it. Even today, when the stock can’t be worth the paper it’s printed on, he won’t let go of a penny’s worth. And there I am,” he added, shaking his head. “Getting ahead of the story. 1968. And in the months between the old site closing and the new one opening, it is perhaps worth noticing that Faust makes a lot of trips to the new site in the middle of the night and if you came close enough to it during the day, you could hear music. Guitar, mostly. Not like someone left a radio on. Like someone was there learning to play.”