In the shadow of summers now past

[cheriepriest]

Hey everyone! Here's recent progress on my modern gothic about two lady academics investigating the case of a mystery woman who was murdered and stuffed in a tree forty years ago - with Bonus! lovely ghosts, sinister messages from beyond, creepy small town shenanigans, and a New Southern Weird vibe (as inspired by a true story that happened way the hell elsewhere):

Project: Cinderwich
Deadline: None!
New words written: 5781
Present total word count: 38,400




Things accomplished in real life: Walked the dogs; went to the grocery store; did laundry; tidied house.

Things accomplished in fiction: Met the third and final "sister"; received a dire warning and a promise; snooped and learned something cool, but felt bad about it.

Other: Although I began writing Cinderwich as a novel, I always knew it'd be a short one...and now I'm reasonably confident that it won't run any longer than 50k. Fine! It's a novella, no big deal. I'm very happy with the draft so far, and I hope to finish it before the end of the month. That's the goal I'm setting for myself, anyway. We'll see how it goes, and where it goes, and what becomes of it. I'll keep you posted.

Number of fiction words so far this year: Gonna say about 9000 and start the count there, because that includes the short I wrote for Apex (the one that lands next month). I realize that sounds low (and it is!) but I've been mired in production work (rewrites, edits, proofs, etc.) until literally a week or two ago, and that's just how it goes sometimes. Realistically, I've written more like 30,000 words (I added 12k to one YA project, and another 8-9k to another, plus content to a Wild Cards project and more), but I tend not to track the stuff that happens outside of straight-up drafting. No real reason. Don't @-me.