So glad it’s the weekend! Vacuumed most of the house earlier today so I didn’t feel guilty spending so much time writing. The house had needed a good vacuuming for quite some time now, especially the upstairs. When we have folks over, they typically don’t have to go upstairs, so that becomes our slacker place for cleaning. I think everybody has them. Ours just happens to be an entire floor.

Will be hanging out with friends tonight and tomorrow morning too. Wanted to give a shout-out to all my friends in the midwest of the U.S. dealing with some dangerous looking weather tonight. It’s always scary when tornadoes are involved. Stay safe!

In other news, I asked the very kind Ray Nicholson to write an honest review of “Night Feeders” for me yesterday. Even though it was tough getting his Kindle Fire to play nice with Smashwords, he was very patient about it. I’m still trying to get used to this whole self-publishing marketing thing, but from what I understand, it takes time. If you have a few minutes, drop by check out his review. One of the things he said was that “[Marlena] shows some writing skills with this work that speaks well for her future endeavors”, which was pretty darn awesome. He’s been reviewing books for ten years now, so the fact that he feels that my work has promise is quite flattering.

Here’s what’s been going on with my writing today:

The plot is getting very tense, so I had to spend some time brainstorming how I wanted the next few scenes to flow. Normally I can just do this in my head, but when timing is important, you really can’t get away from it. Another bonus for doing this is that my writing goes much faster. I map out events, scenes, impressions, and reactions, then flesh it out as I write. These two are really going to be tested now, and well… poor Rennick. That’s all I can say.

Today’s Updates:

Project: Ghosts of Pikes Peak – Working sequel for Night Feeders.

Summary: An old abandoned shack just outside the bustling city of Pikes Peak is riddled with malicious spirits. Werewolf detective Colton Fen has been assigned to a half-vampire partner, Rennick Dalton, to handle the troublesome ghosts, but even their combined strength may not be enough to dissuade the poltergeists from plucking victims from the outskirts of town. On top of that, there may be far more dangerous creatures lurking within the caverns outside the city.

Current total words: 20, 045
New words written: 2,526

Total Words for 2012: 29,626