As my professor this semester put it, “How did it get to be October? And can you believe the semester is already half over?” I’m having a hard time believing it myself, even given the Halloween decorations that are springing up around the neighborhood. I will try to get some pictures of some of the more elaborate displays, such as the River Styx setup in the yard of a house around the corner from us.

Meanwhile, let’s look at how I did in September writing-wise…

I ended up putting And the Devil Will Drag You Under aside, with a restart date of December 6. I did this because I was having troubles with the characterizations and the plot, but mostly the characterizations because of couple of them are decidedly problematic, falling into harmful tropes that I need to figure out how to avoid. I’m giving myself space to think about this some. I have some ideas already, which I’m happy about. But since I’m not under any contractual obligations with this novel, I can set it aside for a bit and work on something else.

And work on something else I did. I am currently revising “Zombie Processes” (it’s a slow, meandering process), and outlining my next novel, The X of Doom. It’s the pirate novel I’ve been working on, on and off, for a few years now. I’m happy about the concepts, but the outline is not quite coming together. I have time to work on it though, so I’m not feeling all that rushed.

And I’ve decided to participate in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) for the first time in a few years! (Strangely, I had a dream the other night about participating, in which I was the Municipal Liaison for Sacramento again, and we held our kickoff meeting in a grocery store.)

Strange dreams aside, I’m going to be writing a novel tentatively titled The Afghan Code, about a group of “murder grannies” (old women who murder — it’s a thing!) involved in a centuries-old global conspiracy. I don’t know what the nature of the conspiracy is, or who it involves, but I’m looking forward to finding out. It’s inspired by The Da Vinci Code, of course, but it will be better. My wife also provided the initial germ of the idea, and will be consulting on this novel since it will involve lots of knitting. However, it was writer Mur Lafferty who found the idea delightful enough to task me to write it.

A prototype of the novel’s prologue can be found here.

That’s all for now. Enjoy this month-long celebration of all things macabre and morbid, but stay safe and healthy as you do so. And some day I will have something more interesting to post here on my blog.