Dreaming of autumn: Friday Update

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News:

I wouldn’t normally share a promotional Instagram post, but I so rarely do videos of myself. The Brazilian company that’s putting Question Not My Salt out in Portuguese wanted an intro video, so I obliged. It’s short and sweet and here.

Works in Progress:

Because I’ve been writing hard horror for over a year, which my alpha reader doesn’t like, I forgot that Masque could be sent to her. When I realized, I tossed it her direction, with a goal of editing in September.

I finished editing May Cooler Heads Prevail. After the initial cuts, it went under 20K words, but then I added a few more scenes and brought it back up over 21K, which officially makes it a short novella. However, I don’t know what genre it is and, therefore, who to send it to. It’s supernatural or fabulism, but both of those are subgenres, and there aren’t enough elements to make it either fantasy or horror. I can only think of a few markets with broader speculative calls. I might end up self-publishing.

MCHP took longer than expected, but after I wrote a piece of flash that made me feel like a piece of chewed gum writing it, and next on my docket is working on the professional edits of Crooked House (Thorns 5), which is the soft conclusion of this portion of the Thorns series. I think I keep delaying because I don’t want this part to be over or to move on to the next.

Books I’m Reading:

Mary Reilly by Valerie Martin (finished)
The Tommyknockers by Stephen King

Things I’m Listening To:

Old Favorites playlist
Fourth of July playlist
Ambient YouTube playlists

Things I’m Watching:

Independence Day
Jaws
Lucy
Longlegs
Elsbeth series (finished)
The Rookie series (finished)
Kitchen Nightmares series
Hoarders series
The Amazing Race series
America’s Got Talent series
CSI: Miami series
CSI: NY series
CSI series
Supernatural series
White Collar series
Murder, She Wrote series

Poem of the Week:

it doesn’t matter
how our bones break
and blood blooms beneath
our exteriors
it doesn’t matter
that our wings have been
snapped from our shoulders
and our halos tarnished
with rust like mold
a devil’s only response
to the fall
is to rise
again