Wadsworth, where's our host, and why have we been brought here?

Here's recent progress on my young adult haunted house story about a long-lost adventure pulp comic manuscript that's guarded by a good ghost and a bad ghost; now with Bonus! gentrifying drama, golden-age mystery, Hollywood intrigue, fallout from The Storm, and an agent who's just trying to do the right thing, goddammit:

Project: Drawing Fire
Deadline: November 16, 2015
New words written: 2233 (mostly today)
Present total word count: 44,196



Things Accomplished in Fiction: Went to school and asked the nurse for help, but went away empty-handed and embarrassed; got into a fight, sort of, at least that's what our protagonist texted to her friends back home; kept yet another secret from mom and stepdad.

Things Accomplished in Real Life: Neighborhood jaunts with the dog, still in the rain, mostly; retrieved kitten from the vet and helped her convalesce by serving as a cat-pillow off and on since yesterday morning; ran a bunch of errands; went to Ace; went to bank; went to post office to mail off some donations for Pat's Worldbuilders campaign.

Other: Go check out the Once And Future Podcast's Great Halloween Special! In it, you can hear me read from the first three chapters of Chapelwood. You'll also hear John Kovalic of Dork Tower and Munchkin fame, military fantasist Myke Cole on what scares him, Christopher Golden’s opening to his latest Dead Ringers, Marjorie Liu’s excerpt from her short story Sympathy for the Bones, Max Gladstone’s opening for A Kiss With Teeth. Just sayin'...

Bonus Other: The Completist over at SFSignal has done a glorious post on the Borden Dispatches. Check it out here! And hey, if you too fall into the camp of hoping there will be more Lizzie Borden books ... well, spread the love. At present no more dispatches are planned - but if sales prove strong enough, I'd be happy to revisit them.

Critter Other: Quinn is home, and she is doing well in the wake of the spay operation. She's not wearing a cone for the time being, but we have a soft one on stand-by should it be required. Mostly, she's just napping off the trauma. On me, when possible.



Number of fiction words so far this year: 100,184