This November has been a fantastic month! Maybe the best all year? There’s a lot to be thankful for this Thanksgiving.

Let’s start with the best news of all: “Dusk and Dawn at Laufenden” is done! The rewrite took five months of hard work, and I never want to read it again, but it’s done. Even better, it’s a significant improvement over the original. The final scene unfolds more naturally, never flinches from the horror, and concludes with a sorrowful, despairing tone far more appropriate for the story.

Final word count for the rewrite is 10,826. This makes it the longest story I’ve ever written about Arlise, beating out The Skull in the Tree by about 200. Proofread and added to the manuscript of the short story collection, it brings the current word count to a little over 48,000. There’s still quite a ways to go, since I’m shooting for 70-75k, but since there are six stories left to write, it shouldn’t be too hard to hit the mark eventually. Given three of those ideas are likely to be novelettes, it might actually be harder to hold it under 100k!

Burial Books finalized their lineup for the anthology set to include “One Bitter Note”, so things are getting more concrete over there. We’re looking at title, cover, and table of contents all being announced in January, with a tentative release date in September. Can’t wait until January!

Meanwhile, as I announced earlier this week, Lovecraftiana has accepted my horror drabble “The Goatskin Codex” for their Halloween issue in 2027. Far off, but I’m glad it didn’t take long for this little story to land. Even better, it’s an established zine with a fair bit of history. Where better to make my horror debut?

Reprinting the novelettes as standalones continues without a hitch. Just last week, I launched preorders for The Skull in the Tree, and The Gale at Quiet Cove is out on Friday. Sales continue to be slow as molasses, but that’s to be expected: novelettes don’t sell well on their own, and I don’t have a wide reach so far. Even so, I’m pretty happy. The covers are fantastic, the interior format is professional, and I can be proud of these books.

Since there’s no reason not to at this point, one of my projects for December will be preparing the ebook editions of all three novelettes for a wide release via Draft2Digital. I don’t think I’ll go wide with the paperbacks, since the formatting will be a lot harder, POD needs uneconomical list prices to turn a profit with novelettes, and the current covers might not even work if differences in formatting cause differences in the page count. Wide ebooks with paperbacks only on Amazon seems like the best route. Look for the wide launch sometime in 2026!

Draft2Digital also figures into one of my other plans: a standalone reprint of “He Who Sows”! Since there’s a lot of erotic content right from the start, this one will probably be exclusive to Smashwords. Amazon can be capricious when it comes to the risqué, and there’s no reason to brave those waters over a mere novelette. Plus, there’s a better chance it finds its niche on Smashwords.

I’ve been in touch with a cover artist who seems like a good candidate and has offered me a very steep discount, so I intend to commission her once I’ve sketched out a workable idea for the cover. For now, there’s no timeline on this one. Just a vague aim for sometime in 2026.

Given how awesome this bust of Tanis from Siobhan (@BonSquiggle on Twitter) turned out, I’m seriously tempted to write more stories about her and her (mis)adventures. Alas, the traditional market for what’s best described as fantasy erotic comedies is almost nonexistent. Still, if the standalone “He Who Sows” finds some fans, there could be a small collection sometime down the road.

Otherwise, I don’t have a lot on my agenda for December. At least not in terms of actual drafting/writing. “The Throne of Ptalis” still needs to be finished, but it’s flash fiction; there aren’t more than 400 or 500 words left to write. If I can fit it all in less than 869 words in total, I’ll send it off to Bothered Stories.

Outlines are likely to be my main focus next month. “Out of Oblivion” is clear-cut from beginning to end, and it has the added benefit of filling the last hole in one of the two arcs of the collection about Arlise, so I’ll start there. Afterwards…well, who knows?

My reading has been a little eclectic this month. Since all the horror in September and October offered a refreshing change of pace, I decided to return to sword & sorcery with The Fortress of the Pearl, the second Elric novel featured in Elric of Melnibone. It was a fun and satisfying read, if weird and psychedelic. But what else can you expect from a story that unfolds primarily in a dream world?

After The Fortress of the Pearl, I dusted off a collection of Louis L’Amour short westerns I started literal years ago for a palate cleanser in the form of Showdown on the Hogback. It started off quite strong, but I think the finale lacks tension after the battle at Yellow Butte. Nevertheless, it was an enjoyable read, and I’m glad to finally check Big Medicine off my reading list!

Right now, I’m a little torn on what to read next. Maybe it’ll be the third Elric novel, The Sailor on the Seas of Fate. Maybe I’ll circle back to Imaro. Maybe I’ll look into one of the romances still sitting on my Kindle. I’ve got a lot of options!

One thing I am hoping for in December is more time for astronomy! I’ve neglected the hobby this year. Most of the spring and summer were abnormally rainy, and even when the skies were clear, I was so laser focused on “Dusk and Dawn at Laufenden” that I didn’t have the time. With a little luck, the end of the year will be different.

The winter sky is wondrous, and I hear we have some comets about, so there’ll be no shortage of targets.

If I bag anything spectacular, I’ll be sure to share the pics in next month’s update. Who knows, maybe I’ll have a cover to share, too? Until then, take care. I’ll see y’all to wrap up the year with one final update in December!