One-track mind: Friday Update

News:

No writing news to report.

I went to Grapevine’s Historic District last Saturday to make glass pumpkins and have a nice lunch with my mom. We passed by the marquee, where I just had to take a picture. I ended up seeing Dracula on my own last night, too.

Works in Progress:

I finished editing The Damp and got it under 40K from 48K by roughly a hundred words. I wanted to get it done in time for PitDark yesterday, because I wasn’t able to get to my other two dark novels in time and I wanted to pitch at least one new piece.

However, based on the last few PitDarks, I don’t think I’ll do another one, as fun as it is. It’s just not effective, and I hit the same problem I hit everywhere, which is that I can’t seem to get any kind of momentum. With Twitter in general death throes (honestly, Threads is more peaceful, although that won’t last once they implement ads or boosted posts, which is inevitable, because we can’t have nice things), no one has the reach they had and I don’t know how many editors or agents were even participating.

I’m discouraged, because I can’t afford indie editing in order to self-publish, but I think that’s my only option with In the Dollhouse We All Wait, A Woman Alone, poetry collections, and the May Cooler Heads Prevail novella. It’s a dilemma, all right, determining whether anything can afford to go out without external edits. I don’t have a lot of notes from my editors, but there’s a reason I have them.

The poetry can probably go out without second eyes. Maybe I can also manage May Cooler Heads Prevail, but I think the subject matter is still too raw and needs to wait until after the election to gauge if it’s right. However, like the poetry, I don’t know whether MCHP has much in the way of an audience.

However, Twitter pitches or not, I’ll have proper novels Masque and the DRI edited and ready to send to agents and presses by next year, so I guess that’s something.

I was sent my edits for Book & Candle (Meridian Book 5), so I’ve been working on them this week, and they’ve been pretty easy. If I don’t finish them today, I’ll finish fairly early tomorrow. Once it’s done, I’ll probably take a day to switch laptops, because the one I’ve been working on is breaking apart on the outside, and it’s only a matter of time before it cracks something essential on the inside.

Then I’ll start on Rack & Ruin (Meridian Book 8), the last Meridian novel. It’s nuts that I’ve almost written two full novel series.

Things I’m Reading:

The Apocalypse and Satan’s Gloryhole by Timothy W. Long and Jonathan Moon

Things I’m Listening To:

Halloween playlist

Things I’m Watching:

The Haunted Mansion (2003)
Twisted
Fright Night (2011)
Late Night with the Devil
Dracula (1931)
Rose Red series
Unsolved Mysteries series
Halloween Wars series
Halloween Baking Championship series
The Last Bite series
Outrageous Pumpkins series
Columbo series
Shogun series (finished)
S.W.A.T. series

Poem of the Week:

run home children run home soon
for the evening is dark and cold and long
and the monsters roam and the dead head home
as long as the lantern is still flickering
you will remain safe all the night
watched over by the harvest moon
low and large on the horizon screaming