Quick NaNoWriMo update: No progress at all to report. But I had a great excuse!

(Don’t miss my pool story at the bottom!)

I’m at the midpoint of the annual NaNoWriMo challenge. The challenge is to hit 50,000 words by the end of the month. I’m on track at 25,880.

With that 25k words, I’ve finished a novella for Ellora’s Cave—Bad, Bad Girlfriend—which I love because I let me comedic muse loose for that story. One of the people who read one particular scene between the heroine and her girlfriend said it was like a Lucy and Ethel scene and kept her laughing. Since, the girls were getting themselves deep into trouble, that comparison fit!

I’ve also finished the first chapter of the free read that will be sent out with my next newsletter shortly. Thanks again to everyone who voted for the story elements they wanted to see. You made it a breeze to write!

I’ve also started on two new projects. I’m in the opening pages, and it’s hard to make huge progress when I’m still feeling my way through the characters and dreaming up the plot, but it will come.

One of my great excuses for not writing yesterday was a booksigning I went to in Little Rock. I’ll post pictures tomorrow and tell you all about it then. I had a wonderful time with my fellow DSRA authors.

The other great reason I didn’t make progress last night, and probably won’t today, is because I have contest entries to judge that have to go out the door! And tonight, I have critiques to wrap up for the Rose’s Colored Glasses critique loop. Okay, I’m a procrastinator, but there is a method to my madness. I didn’t want to pull away from the writing and waited until I had one day where I could devote my time to reading through everything. So today will be another loss.

And I have to fit it all around a trip I’m making to meet with a man who casts runes and a witch.

Non-writing related, but did I mention my venture into the pool? Recently, we had days and days of heavy rain which produced yellow algae in our pool, turning the water slime green. We’ve tried every chemical under the sun to clean it out. The other day, I had the pool brush out, scrubbing at the bottom to get the scum loose. I opened up the telescoping pole to reach the bottom of the deep end and the brush and six feet of pole dropped into the water.

Well, I couldn’t leave it there. But damn, the water’s cold! So I suited up in my wetsuit (picture sausage stuffed into a casing) and waddled out to the pool. I dove and dove, but could only dart down and up because it was so dang cold I was gasping. At last, I got my hands around that sucker and brought it up. I am sooooo glad the pool is a couple hundred yards off the road.

But I feel heroic. I love it when I rise to a physical challenge, even if it’s only swimming through green sludge in a cold-ass pool.