Early Release: The Curio Shoppe: ... Or Treat (Patreon)

Whew! This is only barely an early release, provided Simon manages to get it up on the EMCSA this week. (And if not, bless his heart anyway because I totally sent it to him at like 4am the day of the update.) Regardless, we return as usual to Mr. Jasper's Curio Shoppe, where he has just the thing for a woman trying to connect with her bratty daughter by handing out candy to trick or treaters. It's silly, it's dumb, and I wish I'd had time to squeeze in another 5000 words, but deadlines are what they are.

You guys, I've been writing like gangbusters this week. One commission I've already shared with you, another I plan to send to the commissioner tomorrow and have to the rest of y'all early next week, a 8k word chapter of We, The Nighthawks, and while it doesn't interest any of you, a few more pages of detailed plans for my annual week o' D&D get-together with my buddies next year. We're heading into National Novel Writing Month (or nanowrimo for short), the goal of which is to write a 50k+ word novel in one month. I always tried and failed to do this when I was still teaching, and sometimes it's still a struggle to manage being a person and also creating that much. But this week alone I wrote almost 25k, and would have done more if not for travels and caring for a family member who managed to slip and hurt herself. I feel good, folks. I hate those spells where I go days at a time and don't manage to get words on a page. Even when I produce something I don't totally love, there's something satisfying about creating. And since I suck at art, construction, music and cooking, this is my medium. And it's 4:30 in the morning and I haven't slept in about 28 hours and I am borderline delirious but I'm going to use this as an opportunity to say once again that I love you people for letting me do this for you. Maybe that's not a very Halloweenish sentiment, but... what if I told you I loved you, and that I really like the view in your bedroom window? 

See? Spooky.

(What the hell did I just say? Just remember the nice part where I wasn't making you nervous.)