::checks date of last post::

Well.

Lots has been going on…just not here in the blog. Work on Chaos Agent continues. I’ve been sticking to my 1K+ words/day goal that I started back in May,  which means I’ve written 30K+ words per month for the last three months and have close to 18K so far in August. The draft stands at about 135K, but this draft is rough—I’m juggling a mystery along with cultural, personal, and political conflict. I’d say this book is closer to Law of Survival or especially Contact Imminent as opposed to the more focused single-line plots of Code of Conduct or Echoes of War.

And I’ve already marked a couple of darlings to cut. Minor plotlines. This book doesn’t need any more plotlines.

I will also be pulling together three older fantasy shorts into a single collection. West Side Ghost Story & other tales will include the title story, which originally appeared in ZNB’s anthology Second Round: A Return to the Ur-Bar, along with “Continuing Education” and “8 rms., full bsmt.” It’s scheduled for release over at Book View Café on November 3, and I will do my best to have it up at the other stores at the same time. I’m only planning for the e-book at present. I’ll see what the final page count is and whether a trade edition is possible.

In mundane news, I’ve spent the last couple of evenings cutting back shrubbery in preparation for a new driveway and sidewalk/front step. Both are long overdue.

Add another shovelful to the money pit.

In closing, have a Monarch butterfly dining on the swamp milkweed in the pollinator garden. It’s the first official year for this; in addition to the milkweed, I have hosta, the two volunteer common ninebark*, some blue lobelia, fringed loosestrife (which will be going to that Great Nursery in the Sky because it’s too damned aggressive), volunteer ground cherries, and volunteer boneset. The Jacob Cline bee balm, lovely tall red blooms, is already spent.

*I found the single canes growing next to my Li’l Devil cultivar ninebark. I don’t know if they grew from seeds dropped by birds or if they sprang off the cultivar (assuming the cultivar is grafted to hardy common ninebark rootstock, which I don’t know).

Monarch dining on some swamp milkweed.