Not Quite Three/Very Nearly Four

Happy Monday!

NaNo: 2900 words yesterday. I would’ve written more, but I had to do a bit of research. Sometimes I think the internet search histories of fiction writers and serial killers must be distressingly similar.

A few miscellaneous catchups:

My wife Heather Shaw and I sold a novelette collaboration to PodCastle — a Xmas story! We don’t have a final title yet, but it’s our “Christmas Carol/Ghost-Finder” mash-up. Basically, after Marley’s ghost departs, Ebenezer Scrooge goes out and wakes up a young occultist, and tells him, “Fix my spirit problem.” (It’s not really a “mash-up” in the usual sense — we only used a little bit of Dickens’s actual text, mostly in the dialogue from the spirits.) We couldn’t actually use William Hope Hodgson’s Carnacki as a character (the timelines of the stories don’t mesh), but we named our character Hodgson in homage. Anyway, I really like it, and you’ll get to hear it in time for the holidays.

I’ve been asked to write a (shorter) Xmas story for another podcast too. And so I shall!

Richard A. Lupoff gave my new novel Briarpatch a fantastic review. “Briarpatch is pretty much sui generis. A couple of other novels do come to mind: Fritz Leiber’s Our Lady of Darkness and Douglas Dorst’s Alive in Necropolis.” Not bad company.

It’s my son’s fourth birthday tomorrow. Four years ago today, I was extremely anxious. And tomorrow, instead of worry, exhaustion, and emergency surgery, we get singing and cake! (Though we don’t get to welcome a new family member or see our lives utterly transformed for the better, so I’d still give the edge to the day of his birth in terms of awesomeness. Still though: singing and cake!)