This should have been posted two weeks ago, but I’ve been busy with work and trying to sell  a house.

I entered September only a day behind on the year for the 2024 words per day in 2024 challenge.

Then classes started.

I have seven straight hours of class and labs on Monday, and seven and a half on Tuesday. I get out at eight on Monday. Tuesday, I get out oat five after nine. That’s assuming the students take the entire lab period ot finish. Until this week, they have.

then I have an nhour and a half drive home. I could make it a little quicker than that, but I go home a different way after dark. The way I come in to work after leaving the post office is too narrow. No shoulder, drop-offs, and too many deer and feral hogs. I prefer not to take a chance on large animals in the road when I have no where to go.

So my class schedule has cut into my writing now that we are in the swing of things.

I finished September with 50,617 words. That’s an average of 1687 words per day.

That’s my worst month yet.

I’m going to have to step things up for the rest of theh year if I’m going to win this challenge.

Of course, even if I don’t, I will have had my most productive year ever. In other words, I will have failed to success.

I finished two short stories and a novella in September. Plus I made progress on what is turningout to be a novel. It’s the current work in pprogress. I have two more short stories that I’ll have to write this month, as well as my zine for REHUPA.

Even if I don’t meet the challenge, the year will have turned out to be a success.

Yeah, I know, it’s the middle of September. I’m a little late getting this up. I’m now a full time university faculty member, plus I still have my two part-time gigs, at least for a while.

I ended August with a total word count of 67,138 words, which comes out to an average of 2166 words per day. That was my best month so far this year.

I started off a bit ahead for September, since the first two days were a holiday weekend, but I’m a day behind now. That’s because I only hit a little over a thousand words per day this past week. Labs started was one of the main reasons. I have lab until eight or nine two nights a week, which means those days the word count probably won’t be but about a thousand or so.

We’ll see how the month ends. I’m going to have to fit in at least two thousand words somewhere else in the week.

The other news is that my story “When the Cows Come Home”, which appeared in Pulphouse a few months ago, has been reprinted. It’s available in An Afterlife of Really Creepy Stories edited by Dean Wesley Smith. It’s available at the Pulphouse Store. Just click the link.

Back in the last part of June and into July, I submitted six stories to six anthologies. These were themed anthologies, and to be eligible to submit, you  had to sign up for some writing workshops that focused on these anthologies.

I have gotten responses from the editors of four of them. I haven’t heard from the editors of the toher two yet. One of the anthologies was coedited, and the other was edited solely by one of the coeditors. In other words, that editor was involved in two anthologies.

I also know that editor was been slammed with some things that are taking up most of said editor’s time. This editor is also a writer who is posting daily to a closed group how they are doing in a challenge. The other writers taking part in the challenge, which is can you write as many or more words than this writer in a given period of time, are the ones getting the updates.

So far, I’ve gotten rejections from the editors.

However, I’ve also gotten positive feedback on what I submitted as well as some information ofn what didn’t work for some of the editors. That’s a win, as far as I’m concerned.

I’m not sure where I’m going to send the stories I’ve gotten back. I might put them in a collection myself. We’ll see.