I played some good games, watched some good stuff, read some good books. Here’s a look at a sampling of them.

There is no ranking here, no Top ____. It’s just me talking about things I loved.

I am on antibiotics for the first time in nearly thirty years.

I grant that I should have been on something back in 2019 when I’m fairly certain I had strep throat (my fever the first day hit 40.2C aka 104.3F and I was not making good decisions; I am notoriously bad at judging the severity of my own health problems, if it isn’t obvious). But otherwise I just…fight stuff off. An overactive immune system is why I have allergies, why it’s attacking my own body.

That process (at least for the latter) is throttled and, while I intellectually know this, and I know it’s working to keep my body from eating itself, the warnings of “you will be more susceptible to opportunistic infections” didn’t really hit me until Friday, and the walk-in clinic didn’t open until Monday so it was not a fun weekend.

Infections are now going to be a thing, I guess.

I am…not better, and I should be. I don’t know if I need a different antibiotic, if it’s a side effect (I am trying to treat it as such atm), or if it’s some other kind of infection. Every time I think I’m over the worst of *gestures* all this bullshit, something else happens. Finally find out the biosimilar is working? Insurance issues pop up! Get the insurance fixed? Now I’ve got an infection and my box of very expensive cold-chain meds went missing for a goddamn day in transit. I’m exhausted. (And broke; please buy books, I cannot afford the time off to keep going to the walk-in clinic.)

Also, before I get to the book news: please, I am begging you, wear masks. Especially in hospital settings. If you have the slightest tickle in your throat, mask in public. I should not have to be forced to sit in a confined area with coughing children and adults in a medical setting when I need help. There is still a pandemic; there’s an outbreak at my local hospital! You guys are literally killing people.

Anyway.

I hit 100K in fourteen days for November, above is the screenshot from it, and then yesterday I finished the rough barebones draft of the horror book with several more thousand words (this is a lot, even for me, to be doing while working full time but…this is how I manage anxiety and I have a lot of it).

Beneath the Pines (Waverly 7) is nowhere near done yet, despite it currently sitting at 70K, and I’m still going to try to get it done this month. The original plan was to just keep writing words on some other horror books and add to Taiga Ridge’s count because I like getting all the NaNoWriMo badges, and I’m just missing “Write every day on the book in November” and “Hit par every day”.

But I feel like garbage physically, I think mentally I’m crashing, so I don’t know anymore. Even the promise of the dopamine hit of more words is not breaking through the fog.

This does mean, though, that the fall 2024 hole in my schedule is now filled with a new standalone horror book.

It’s been thirteen years since Maya McGlynn set foot in Taiga Ridge Lodge, the twenty-room luxury resort where she grew up. She was simply Maisie, the daughter of the caretakers, and thought of the lodge as her own.

That was when her parents were arrested as serial killers.

It’s been ten years since Maya last had contact with the lodge’s owner, who promised her, upon the conviction of her parents and her whole world forever altering, that she’d always be taken care of.

That was when she changed her name and stopped returning his calls.

It’s been two years since Taiga Ridge Lodge thrived with visitors. Since bookings wavered and rooms were closed off, its halls grew silent, and it never reopened after the pandemic.

That was when she forgot it existed.

Now, Maya has received notice that the owner has passed and, as promised, she is being taken care of: Taiga Ridge Lodge and all its property is hers to dispose of as she sees fit…as soon as she visits her old home to make the final arrangements.

Now, a winter storm approaches, trapping her with restless ghosts, a stray cat, and a single voice on the radio for help.

Now, Taiga Ridge Lodge might not let her go again.

This is a….dark fantasy, slow-burn kind of gothic horror, that is full of rage but also love. It’s kind of like if Dweller was written a little more like The Silent Places but was also a love story, so it’s not super funny. I know some writers are very consistent in their voice from book to book, but I let character dictate that, so sometimes I just will not be funny. My standalone readers tend to be Dweller fans, so…fair warning!

And obviously the cat will be totally fine.

It fits in with what was previously a trio of books that come from the same place in me–Dweller on the Threshold, The Silent Places, and a gothic romance I’m still not done that I will never publish. They’re kind of like fraternal triplets, in that on their own they look very different but all together you can see the same DNA. I wrote a bit about that here at Patreon, writing the same story multiple times. Taiga Ridge makes them quadruplets, I guess.

It’s releasing November 12, 2024

Preorder is now available for eBook: Kindle | Kobo | Nook | iBooks

I am going back to editing now, which at least I can do from bed. Please buy some books and wear a mask.