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.