Here's recent progress on one of my projects that I'm not supposed to specify yet, but will probably be able to talk about sometime in the next few weeks, I hope, so my apologies for any and all cryptic nonsense posted here until it comes to light:

Project: The Agony House
Deadline: [Redacted]
New words written: 7655 (multi-day total)
Present total word count: 21,842



Things Accomplished in Fiction: Finished a draft of chapter four, yay! Also went back and finished chapter three, which I previously had thought was done. But it wasn't.

Things Accomplished in Real Life: [In general, since last week's post] Neighborhood jaunts with the dog; supervised playdates with the dog's friends; drove down to the Marvelous Mr. Tuck in Georgia, and got an old and faded tattoo turned into something entirely fabulous; spent several evenings sorting through soot and bird poop trying to figure out WHAT THE HELL was stuck in our fireplace making all that noise; eventually with help of husband and shop-vac retrieved the entirely unexpected culprit, then put him outside where he wandered off and lived happily ever after, I assume; did a late-night Skype interview with the Skiffy and Fanty podcast folks. It's been a busy week.

Publishing Other: I got an early copy of Chapelwood! It is shiny! Or rather it is pleasantly matte, but it is metaphorically shiny.




Further Publishing Other: YOU GUYS GUESS WHAT - Publishers Weekly liked Chapelwood! You can go read all about it right here! Whew! It's always a huge relief when the first big reviews out of the gate are good. SUCH A RELIEF. [:: collapses ::]

ONE MORE BIT of Publishing Other: Ten copies of Chapelwood are up for grabs over at Goodreads! All you have to do is click here to enter the drawing. (US only. My apologies.)

Number of fiction words so far this year: 77,845


And in closing: Here's Greyson and Luna.
It's dog-love, between two dogs.