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 1, 2016
New words written: 5853 (cumulative)
Present total word count: 40,522



Things Accomplished in Fiction: Set a whole bunch of stuff on fire; finally got the message; went to brunch and someone was missing.

Things Accomplished in Real Life: Neighborhood jaunts with the dog; went to lunch with friends and then joined them for an open-house because I'm nosy; spent awhile fine-tuning the flap copy for Brimstone (God, I hope they take the suggestions); filed a harassment report or two; hosted a dog playdate or two; went to the grocery store; went to the post office; answered some important emails; made appointment for dog with groomer, which meant also chasing down his vet to send along updated vaccination records because apparently the groomer didn't have those on-hand.

Other: Got a very sweet email from Briley's new mom, telling me that he's doing well and he came back from his first vet visit with a clean bill of health. Also, he loves the dog park - and he's being super patient with the cats.

Bonus Dog Other: Today we got some snow, and there was dog-rejoicing.



Cat Other: Quinnie sometimes forgets to close her mouth, and it's amazing.




Number of fiction words so far this year: 27,309