Reporting on last week…

I finished last week’s short story, “A Plague of Ghosts”, on Sunday instead of Saturday, and it’s a good one, if I do say so myself. At least, some of the imagery I came up with is creepy. Well, to me at least. And the last two scenes of the story freaked me out even as I was writing them. I’m assured this is a good sign, so I believe the story, with some revisions, is a keeper.

I also did some research on ER practices for my novel Padma, which is still in revision. And worldbuilding for Witness to the Scourge, my contemporary fantasy. I’ve been reading Dreams Underfoot from time to time, a collection of stories by Charles de Lint, and it’s given me some ideas for direction and characters. I mean, really good ideas. More later.

This week’s prompt:

I drew this week’s prompt from the main deck of The Story Engine. Here’s the photo. Click to embiggen:

Sorry about the low quality of the image. I tried (not very hard, admittedly) to make it better, but that sort of thing is more the domain of my wife, who’s the expert kitten photographer, and I take pictures like… this. The quality is probably because I took the photo in the early morning instead of the middle of the day, so there’s no natural light streaming in through the window. Anyway, the prompt is:

A veteran wants to create (or improve) a decrepit tunnel but first they must repair the damage they have done.

I already have ideas for a story. It will probably be mainstream fiction, which is a genre I very rarely write in for some reason; in fact, I think my last mainstream story was one I wrote in high school called “Life and Times”. My English teacher at the time thought it was brilliant, but I’ve never revisited it.

Etc.

I have a three-day weekend from work (alas, today is the last day of it), and I decided to take a full social media break as well. I avoided FB, Threads, Bluesky, and Instagram. I did post on a couple of writing-related Slack channels and Discord servers I belong to, though I assiduously avoided the politics channels on those. Yay me! I stayed sane! But my break also means that this post won’t be broadcast on various social media platforms until tomorrow, Tuesday the 18th. I’m okay with that.

That’s it for now. I may or may not post again later this week. If I don’t… Have a great week, all!