There are monsters in the chimney, all black and stained with soot

Wordy words.

Prayers
Words today: 1024
Words total: 19708
Reason for stopping: overburdened with suck
Sustenance: coffee
Tyop: her face shadowed by the wide brim of her hate

I'm redoing chapter 2 now, as part of Operation: Cate not sucking. I've given her something to do and other characters to interact with, but adding the old expo with the new stuff is a bit tricky. Also, my pretty words all ran away and left me boring ones.

And then I got mugged by an Unwelcome Werewolves of Indeterminate Ethnicity Story, thanks to cristalia.

"Winter Coats"
Words today: 542
Words total: 542
Reason for stopping: What the heck do I do with this?
Sustenance: I love the little tacos. I love them good.
Exercise: walked a mile
Darling: The madness is in his blood--some days it rises so strong he must open his skin and let it spill, lest it consume him.
Deaths: a grandmother
Mean things: The narrator's girlfriend is cross with him, because he killed her grandmother. Also, he's gone insane.

This story needs something shiny and crunchy, because otherwise I have yet another fairy tale retelling on my hands, and what do I do with that?

Other writing stuff: Subbed "Smoke & Mirrors" to Strange Horizons, and will send "Ebb" to Realms tomorrow.

(no subject)

"Dogtown" is live this week at Strange Horizons .

I was kind of freaking out yesterday by my overabundance of ghoul and werewolf stories in progress right now. But then I remembered that 2006 is the year of the Fire Dog, so I can write tham all and call it thematic. Maybe I can fix up the tindalosi, too.

Red fire dogs

Maybe all that coughing and snorting got the words unstuck.

Sephie, inspired by requests for a Dogtown sequel, put out again today.

"The Garden, The Moon, The Wall"
Words today: 947
Words total: 2947 (Nearing critical mass for completion, though this one threatens to be fat.)
Reason for stopping: fizzled out
Sustenance: veggie sandwich and ginger beer
Mean things: Cramps, and a lot of awkwardness leading to girlsmoochies. Also the growing realization that she's not over her dead ex, yet, who she helped make dead.

And then the Unwelcome Wolves of Indeterminate Ethnicity came back, this time with plot.

"Winter Coats"
Words today: 1018
Words total: 1560
Reason for stopping: eyes crossing, and time to close
Tyop: Her ghost-wolves bear icicle fangs. and six wolves he slow
Darling: The winter night bites like iron, sharp as a hunter's trap, and all the warmth bleeds out of him as he stumbles barefoot into the snow.
Deaths: several wolves
Mean things: He's starting to figure out the grandmother thing, and his girl slapped him. Neither of them have names.

Words Word don't know: dawnlight, piercings, witchy