458 pages, 97,644 words. Ah. Some of the chapters have fallen into place. The reviews are coming in good. The site I use has raised my status to "preferred author" based on the quality and quantity of work.

The stack is bigger, better, more concise. Every time I thought I could see the light at the end of the tunnel I thought it was the train. Now I am sure it is the train, but I see a bit of daylight beyond that.

Hey y'all. One of my short stories has been published. If you would like to read it, it is online and I will be happy to provide you with the address. You can find it at my other blog. But only if you are a user of that blog.... so let me know.

So here we are, at 82,601 words. Chapters I believed were finished months ago have again been edited and revised. I have been the beneficiary of some very learned individuals, some of them in positions which afford me inside info. Like police officers. They read my stuff and tell me that I am all wet or how to fix it so it sounds plausible.

The question remains.... will I ever be FINISHED????

My novel broke the EIGHTY-ONE thousand word mark today. Now I lay me down to sleep etc. I can say I have nearly finished a NOVEL. Yeah, some of my favorite authors pen books of several HUNDRED thousand words. I checked. My current read, John Irving's Until I Meet You is about 700,000 words. However, this is a guy who could write a phone book and I would buy it. 

I post chapters where other writers can review them. The "dailies" are what they tell me. MOST are good. Some are helpful. Some make me cringe and wonder if my identity has been exposed to evil forces.

It seems like a hundred or so years ago that Boo said, "Write a couple of pages a day and in a year you will have a novel."

He was both right and wrong. I write much more than a couple of pages a day. I write a bunch. Then I go over previously written stuff and clean it up, clear it out, write tighter. Write better.

Snakehead is over 81K words. Not all of them are so bad. Some of them, I even like. Every once in a while I hit upon a description, a turn of phrase that sends me reeling. Some of them I have had to take out. I am saving this one for a particular place in time:

The moon hung her face like a reluctant bride.

Surely I can find a place for that!

Hey kids! We are back from our latest adventure! We had a fabulous time and are very excited about possibly making a move. I don't like being this cryptic but I feel that it is necessary to protect my privacy.

On other fronts, Snakehead is at 79834 words and 369 pages. I know it seems like I have lost some words somewhere. Mostly that is due to the editing process. With every pass it gets tighter and cleaner. I have a bad habit of tossing around "that" all the time so it is one thing I check for. In 95% or more of the usages I can eliminate it and make it read easier, smoother.

Multiple Dog Households

Yet another vote for multiple dog households is this: I know coming into my house that there are no intruders camping out upstairs, waiting for me to kick off my shoes and toss my purse and keys down.

I read a lot of stuff and I watch way too much Court TV. I am fascinated (probably has much to do with my personal experience with a serial killer – I went to school with one of Ted Bundy’s victims) but I have always, always been fascinated with crime scenes. I remember hearing and learning of the Lindburgh kidnapping when I was about eleven. I read everything I could put my hands on. That was only the beginning. But I was talking about the value of multiple dog households.

My theory is that while one dog might be easily dispensed with (killed) that multiples would make it tougher. Especially if they were big dogs, all over the place, confusing any but the most organized killer. So unless I am the hapless victim outside my home, and happen upon some psychopath who is a situational offender, with each passing year I get safer from attack.

My dogs make me an unattractive target. They are noisy. They would be significant in their absence so I would never enter my house unless all three were standing at the door barking their fool heads off. In short, they earn their keep and then some. If you have just experienced a vet bill or endured another pair of shorts that found their way into someone’s mouth rendering them unwearable, think about what you get in return. We don’t have dogs who work eight hour shifts. They are always on the clock. And they do a good job just being dogs. Even the stupid ones.

Snakehead is chugging along at 81,765 words. To say I am working hard on it would be a massive understatement. But it is coming along swimmingly. Layers of plot are added, characters are getting additional depth. Theme is in there somewhere, something along the line of "no one is all good or all bad and at the end of the day all you have is yourself. That which you counted on, be it family, friends, the medical profession, the legal profession, your belief in a higher power, all of that can be stripped away leaving one naked and vulnerable in the blink of an eye.

My intention is to wrap it up by the end of October with about 120k words. My chapters seem to work out to be about 5000 words, give or take. Much of it is still in very rough draft form. But I have most of it down on paper and it is a lot of paper.

Jernee dog asked how many pages I have written and that is a valid question.

Today, before any additions or subtractions that translates into Snakehead is 321 pages long. It is 74,034 words. The total word count for everything I have written since February when I began keeping track is 129,152 words on 538 pages.

The process involves writing lots of stuff and then the rewrites generally cause me to "lose" words because everything gets tighter and superflous expository dumps get dumped. So in the morning, I note where the word count is, and then again when I am done in the afternoon. So even though it may appear that I have only written a few pages, the truth is that I may have written 8 and eliminated 6. Make sense?

So far, this week, my favorite line is "yeah, all pedophiles look good on paper."

As you may know I am currently working on a novel called Snakehead. Snakehead is approaching 65,555 words. I write one more word and there we are. To be sure, I write stuff, and then rewrite it, edit it (Note the commas? I love commas. Commas are what fish poo looks like. When I see commas in tanks I know everyone is on schedule, the train is leaving the station. Etc. ) A Snakehead is a particularly nasty fish, native to Southeast Asia, that is cardinal red with two black racing stripes down its sides. What makes it "nasty" is that it is singularly the fish that kills for the sheer joy of killing. It kills more than it can eat. Just because it can.

Yes, I know. Let us see the hard copy in Borders. Not too far off. As a writer, my next issue is: what do I do for an encore? What now? I have struggled, (there, another one!) wrestled with it. I got it. The next novel is titled "When Monday Comes". It is a story about a serial killer. A serial killer that the authorities are trying to stop.... eventually..... because they have reasons to want to be on other cases, reasons to want to "overlook" the murders. I don't want to give away too much here. BUT.... I am excited. It involves serial killers - dogs - redemption... all my favorite themes.

I called this post "weird rituals" because there are a number of things that happen every day in a particular order before I do what I do. I write. After I write in longhand 3 pages with a particular pen, and after I determine the word of the day and when I have turned on the sound machine, fed the puppies and fishies. _ I have written a series of short stories in a particular format. I have written stuff that fit no particular genre for much of my life, beginning in the third grade when I won the prize for that fabulous story about Halloween that garnered me a First Place Ribbon!

I can write for magazines, fiction and nonfiction. I can write short stories. To date I have a bunch of them - One collection called Ten Ten Tens. Another collection called Fish Stories, getting ready to submit for potential publication. Sometimes when one shakes the cosmic apple tree, one is pelted with oranges. I wrote "Shark and Remora" after "Mullet". There were, of course, other fish stories in between. I started a short story, (still not complete, in progress, about bettas called Boys in Prom Dresses.) It will get there! Really!

When I was looking around for the inspiration for another Fish Story, the Snakehead showed up. I never heard of a snakehead. A snakehead is a fish, a beautiful cardinal red fish with two black racing stripes down it's sides. It is an unusual fish... It kills more than it can eat. It kills for the sheer joy of killing.

"Snakehead" the novel is currently sitting at 62K words. Daily I cull, daily I elaborate, daily I get closer to the pentultimate conclusion. It is a novel of suspense, it is (I hope) chilling, intriguing, beguiling and compelling.

Watch for it coming soon to a Borders or Barnes and Noble near you. I promise a ride. Don't even try to figure out the ending. It's too sick.

In the event that any of you were wondering... yes, the novel is coming along swimmingly. I lug it around with me to prove it is real. I post portions in places where people who know where to put commas can read it and let me know what they think. Of course, poor Boo is subjected to its growth daily. It is fine. Thank you very much. I appreciate that.

My fishies are all doing well. I have learned a lot from my new friends who have been doing this for years. Each of my fish (SEVEN as in Deadly Fins) is in a bowl of a gallon of spring water with a bit of plant and a hidey hole.

Some of them were in kind of bad shape when I got them. There is a common theme in pet stores that these fish can live through almost anything. We heard recently that they could do fine in a plastic cup of water for up to two months. The truth is that hundreds of generations ago these fish were the kind of fish found in very slow moving rivers that were shallow, in southeast Asia.

To be sure, a child might survive living in a mud hut with a cup of rice every other day. But that doesn't make it right. A dog or cat might survive against nearly insurmountable odds outside in the heat, cold, and hurricanes. That doesn't make it right.

My fishies will be spoiled with clean clear spring water. The people on the boards talk about clean water as if it were a miracle drug. It must be. My first fish, POODLE! is a deep cobalt blue guy. When I brought him home a couple of weeks ago his tail was raggedy and torn. I have watched him recover in his happy place with his votive candle holder and plants and under a magnifying lens his tail, which previously was a cause for concern is now spotless and smooth.

I don't claim to be any kind of guru. This I do claim: I know these folks know what they are talking about and I am paying attention. Rapt attention. For the time being, I feel confident my fishies are well and happy

 A wise man once told me that life was too short to go around repeating the mistakes of others. He said that the reason there was an eraser on the end of a pencil was that we all make mistakes. He also said that, just like a pencil, you make too many mistakes you lose your ass.

My fish are good. In order of appearance there are: POODLE! an India ink black orchid whose tail splits have healed nicely.

2. Betta carotene -bad mamma jamma. Might have some tail issues. Treating same.

3. Michaelangelo - busy building the perfect bubble nest for the babes.

4. Sabine- the answer to Boo's Griffin's love prayer.

5. Savannah - the pink lacy hat of all southern belles.

6. Delta Dawn - Savannah's sister, mystical grrrl who stole mah heart.

and last but so not least... the little blue grrrrrl... the one what rock my world. The one who makes me reminisce of Esther Williams. The one, the only..... ready? She's just a little tiny one inch of fishie wonderfulness.... my favorite.....

OneFishTwoFishRedFish.

Ahhh!!!! The crowd roars!!!!

So that is the water line for the day. 57,718 and rising.

I sent it out to one of my writers groups and they gave me some critiquing. I worked on chapter one again today. You know how if things are not happening rapidly you lose interest? In chapter one there are:

2 job changes, 1 abortion but 3 pregnancies, 1 party but 3 mentions of parties, 1 wedding, 2 household moves, 1 business move, 4 affairs and one case of love at first sight. The only crimes committed so far are very minor, maybe a little pot.

Nobody has died yet. That comes after chapter 2: in which there are 3 teenagers dead within the first 5 pages. There is a saying that all novels are about death. In this one so far there are 8 - or is it nine. The body count could go up. There are enough lawyers to justify picking a few off. A doctor might go. Then again, there is one in prison for life and he tries to do himself in and nearly succeeds.

Watch for this one: Lorna Bracewell. http://www.lornabracewell.com/" title="http://www.lornabracewell.com/" target="_blank"http://www.lornabracewell.com... She’s going to be a star. I had the serendipitous pleasure of finding a nail in my tire and a rising star on the same day. If not for a nail the shoe would be lost….. as translated to tires which caused me to be trapped at the tire store at the mall, hence Borders and Lorna Bracewell as a Saturday bonus. She’s a brilliant lyricist billed as a folk singer with a cagey sense of irony delivered with a wink that will take your breath away. Her voice is, suffice it to say it conjured up torch singers of days gone by, at once like molten black velvet and as spicy as patchouli. And she’s fun to watch, engages the audience, is real. The skin horse in the Velveteen Rabbit ain’t got nothing on Lorna. This old soul trapped in a young body knows what it is like to love and be loved and she pours it out in her songs.

Go have yourself a listen: http://www.lornabracewell.com/" title="http://www.lornabracewell.com/" target="_blank"http://www.lornabracewell.com...