(For real this time. ‘Scuse the premature posting way back when, if you caught it in the 20 seconds it took me to frantically revert to Draft status. When you’re chronically sleep deprived, “Preview” and “Publish” are way too close together.) I’ve set a goal of writing one short story per month, both to build a stockpile of content for future Ko-Fi memberships and to give myself an occasional sense of completion that’s a long way off with this bloody endless novel. I thought I’d ease into it with a KotSQ-related bonus story that was already mostly finished. I changed …

I’m getting impatient and almost added the book description to the Fantasy page. It is… not ready, to put it mildly. I did stick it at the top of the manuscript doc, though, so I have to look at it at least briefly every day upon opening and can noodle with it as inspidesperation moves me. I instead satisfied my need for administrative progress by uploading the final cover to retailers so it’s at the top of my drafts to greet me when I log in. ETA: The Fantasy page is temporarily gone, not because I’ve canned the book but …

Today I learned “complacent” doesn’t mean what I thought it meant, and though I’m going to blame it on near-universal misuse of the word when people actually mean “complaisant,” I’m painfully embarrassed about every time I’ve used it incorrectly. I knew “complaisant” was a word, but I can’t remember seeing it in… 30 years? And while some dictionaries have caved to the common misuse in secondary definitions, know where they haven’t extended it? Complacency, which people also use incorrectly because they were allowed to get away with “complacent.” 114 rough draft pages have become 187 revised pages. You can taste the …

Somebody asked me a while ago why I’m not worried about revealing the whole story to potential readers by doing these posts. I just don’t think “they went to a location and performed an unspecified task” is all that spoilery? In fact, I think anyone who came in search of juicy clues would be peeved by the lack thereof. This is very much about the writing process, not what happens in the story. Half the content of these posts is whining about how much I hate coming up with names, which isn’t exactly “Oh great, now I know there are …