And 14 to the estimated release of my next short story.

Hi, it’s Vincent again, let’s catch up!

Graveyard and music ambience for your enjoyment

So what’s new?

My life

Weather’s been all over the place here in North Carolina. Rainy yesterday but mostly dry, maybe too dry. Sometimes cool, sometimes hot, sometimes too hot. You know how it is. I’ve made a few daily goals this week in my repeated efforts to better myself. Feel free to join me, let me know how it goes.

• stretches and pushups before my daily shower, however long you can stand to stretch, and however many pushups is comfortable. Right now for me that’s about 5 minutes of stretching and 15 wall pushups. Its a start!

• 30 minutes of analog time, that being time spent off your electronics and away from social media. I can’t do a whole day’s detox yet. 15 minutes of brain dumping after my shower, 5 minutes of meditation before bed, and 10 minutes of crafts works well for now.

• Crafting. Oh my sister would kill me if she knew I was trying this again, but I’m determined to do it this time. I’m making plarn, which is short for plastic yarn. It’s made from plastic grocery bags, and you can use it like regular yarn. 10 minutes of making plarn while listening to the radio or a podcast per day is my goal! No, I don’t know what I’m going to do with the resulting balls of plarn yet. One thing at a time!

I encourage y’all reading this to join me in any of these goals, or make your own. It’s never to late to try something new or to improve yourself. Just need to have plans for the bad days.

Oh, that’s a great transition into my next topic, actually.

My Reading

I was an ARC reader for a nonfiction book. The Messy Writer by K. E. Koontz is for people with mental or physical disabilities. The subtitle is ‘Creating Stories When Your Brain Has 47 Tabs Open’ and yeah, that’s what it’s like. The author, who I follow on Tumblr but don’t know really well as a person (disclaimer), talks about her intense health struggles in her book and a life that sounds much busier and chaotic than mine. And she’s got a system that works.

But this book isn’t really about her teaching us her system. It’s about creating our own based on our own unique needs as disabled people. She gives starting questions for analyzing how much time you actually have in a day, advice for handling brain fog, suggestions for low energy (red level) days, and more, and more, and more.

The chapter that really caught my attention was how to actually, practically, write to market without burning out. You know, I’ve never seen anyone talk about that before. Most writing advice books I’ve seen outright say don’t write to market, but Koontz doesn’t. I find that refreshing!

She doesn’t know I’m writing this, by the way. I’m not paid to talk about this. I just really liked this book! And I think if you’re disabled, from ADHD to fibromyalgia, or anything else, you will too.

Here’s the Goodreads link.

My Writing

So. I think I said my goal was to get the Halloween short story’s first draft done by… I don’t remember but it doesn’t matter, it didn’t get done. I hit a stumbling block and it took me until last night to notice it was there. I almost gave up on the story entirely, decided to rewrite it as a Christmas story! But in playing around with that theoretical Christmas story, I realized the issue:

Love interest guy sucked. He was boring, unoriginal, and I didn’t have a good picture in my head for him. My mental image kept showing a random jock douchebag instead of the handsome but irritated alpha my MC teams up with. I hadn’t taken enough time to develop him. There’s always that one character I think I know better than I do…

Fortunately, the fix was simple, and it crystalized the whole story for me: Love interest guy is my MC’s ex-boyfriend and former partner in the private detective business. Lots of questions were answered when I decided this, some I didn’t even know I had. A few additional character details and bingo, everything is ready.

I should’ve known there was a problem earlier. The moment he showed up on the page, the words stopped and the ‘beat point’ outline started. I thought I was just feeling unwell when it happened but no, I just messed up and didn’t know it.

Well. It’s gonna be a tight race to the finish. But I think I can get the first draft done today or tomorrow at latest. From there it’s onto editor buddy Jay, and (fingers crossed!), we’ll have something to unleash on October 25th.

I’m working on other stories too. The Honoria sequel I hope to have out in November has been fully developed, I’ll start writing its first draft after I finish the Halloween short story’s. For December, I’m being even more ambitious and trying to get a Runner Owen novella out! I haven’t even worked on the next PSI short story yet. I’ve been busy with these other stories. But I believe in myself, my work ethic, and my ability to be flexible in the face of reality.

If I get hit with another medical crisis like last year, I’m gonna shoot the devil.

One More Thing!

Have you checked out these bundles I’m in over on Itchio? Two great collections of indie horror, one is even specifically queer!

We Have Always Been In The Darkness - $10 USD

Lots of queer indie horror. Gothic and cosmic horror, furies, angels, the works.

Chills, Thrills and Kills - $69 USD

Almost 100 books of indie horror for this price is a really good deal. You’ll be reading until next Halloween!

Please share these with your friends! I’m in both bundles with Lock the Last Door. And don’t forget to leave reviews for what you read on Itchio, Goodreads, Storygraph, social media, wherever. It helps all authors, indie and tradpub alike.

That’s all for now!

Until next time y’all. Next week I’ll talk about my success or failure with this short story, and how my Instagram usage has gone.

Don’t forget: Support human creators, and don’t let the bastards grind you down!

Vincent <3