Warning: This post is utterly unstructured. It’s rambly. Unfocused. Incoherent. Enjoy.

The first thing I want to say is that my short story “The Apocalypses of Cheryl Dean” has been published by Inner Worlds magazine, and can be found online. It’s one of my favorite stories, and I am so glad it found a good home. The other stories in that issue are all wonderful as well. Check it out!

Well, I didn’t “win” NaNoWriMo this year, by which I mean I did not reach 50,000 words in my novel before November 30. Just after mid-November, I altered my goal, since I was sick, so I aimed for 25,000 words by November 30. I did not reach that goal either. I ended up with about 23,000 words on Witness to the Scourge because, well, I was sick. With COVID. Yes, it’s still out there, people. I’m glad I am fully vaccinated with all kinds of boosters, since I’d hate to think of how badly off I’d be otherwise. Instead it just settled in my lungs like a cold, and filled up my sinuses, and only gave me one night of shivering fever. I’m reasonably sure that I won’t end up with long COVID.

So, Witness to the Scourge will have to wait until I feel better.

My family celebrates Thanksgiving today, as well as my mom’s birthday. Unfortunately, I can’t make it, because, as I already said, COVID. This makes me unutterably sad. I am, of course, grateful for a number of things: COVID vaccines and boosters, modern medicine in general, and so on. My pulmonologist in particular has been very helpful. I have a birthday present to send to my mom, or to deliver on Christmas Eve, but I won’t say what it is here.

On writing in general, I wonder if I should strive to be a more ambitious writer, meaning that I should aim to write better, write more, write faster, and really push that publication agenda. I mean, I already write quite a bit, I submit manuscripts twice a week, but I tend to trunk my novels before actually finishing them (see my previous post on that, “The Trunkening“). I need to go in with a solid vision of the story, and, you know, actually finish them. I’ll come up with an agenda, suggested by my friend Theresa, and see what happens.

I suppose that’s all I’ve got this time around. I promise my next post with be more coherent.

So this time I’m going to recommend the Penelope Standing Mysteries by my friend T. M. Baumgartner, writing as Tess Baytree. I don’t read many cozy mysteries, but this series is a lot of fun, and I highly recommend them. Start, of course, with the first one, Death Walks a Dog, and go from there.

It’s Holidailies Time, but this year I have no penguin adventures to share with you. My deepest apologiest.