Project I Was Supposed To Work on: Ghost PI story
Stories I Actually Worked On: “Coffee Kills” Mystery and Cabin Horror Story
Word Count for Both Stories: 2123
Goal Met: Technically, yes.

Well, I’m back from vacation — ostensibly, a writing retreat in Idaho with my fellow Clarion Westies, but really, there was considerably less writing than I had originally planned. My days were packed with crit sessions and hanging out and managing to bruise myself whilst floating down a river . . . because I really am that special and, also, nature hates me. (People ask me why I’m not an outdoorsy person. I’m like, “Look, nature’s pretty. I like looking at it, but unfortunately, nature doesn’t particularly like looking at me, so forgive me for not waxing poetic about something that seems hellbent on trying to KILL ME whenever it gets the chance.)

I did manage to get some writing done, though. And I really, really did plan to work on the Deacon Detective Agency mystery while I was there, honest, but a couple of things happened:

1. I finally had an idea for an upcoming anthology. It was something I’d really hoped to submit to but wasn’t exactly sure what to submit. But since the anthology in question has an actual deadline involved, the “Coffee Kills” mystery got bumped to the head of the line.

2. I went to a scary cabin with ten people who are just as deranged as I am, which means most of us felt compelled to write short horror stories where we all killed each other in terrible ways.

Happy times . . . before DEATH came.

I like that my camera blurred the face of only one person in the whole group, and that person was me. I choose to believe this is because a homicidal ghost was hovering right in front of me for a brief moment in time.

But back to business: I really want to give a quick shout-out to a bunch of awesome people who donated to my CW Write-a-Thon efforts: Carolyn Caldwell, Kim Neville, Jeffrey Lemkin, Lorraine Brown, M. Huw Evans, Alyc Helms, Mekaela St. George, Marisa Stadler, Henry Lien, James G. Harper, James Robert Herndon, Blythe Woolston, and Neile Graham. You guys are awesome and collectively donated $318.00, which is amazing and so much more than I expected to raise. I’m incredibly grateful, and I promise, as soon as I finish the anthology story — which, with any luck, won’t take very long — I’ll get to work on the PI story that hopefully you’ll enjoy.

On deck for this week: something Mysterious (because I haven’t decided yet) and a Slightly Less Epic review for the hugely iconic western: The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly.