Here's recent progress on my 19th century D.C. spy caper about a powerful Difference Engine that will end the Civil War - now with warhawk conspiracies, clockwork assassins, two presidents with more in common than they know, two spies with less in common than they think, a conflicted U.S. Marshal, and Bonus! not-at-all mad scientist who can save the world if someone will just give him a chance:

Project: Fiddlehead
Deadline: October 1, 2012
New words written: 4732 (okay but not great)
Present total word count: 86,083 words





Things accomplished in real life: Daily jog with the dog; WASHED ALL THE THINGS or at least all the laundry, anyway; finished up yardwork; took my cousin to supper and then drove her back to school; filled out an email interview; got ready for the big Sword and Laser interview tomorrow.

Other: I wrote all but 300 of those words today. Boo. As a one-day total that's pretty good. As a two-day total, it's only semi-respectable. Tonight I go have supper with those visiting friends from Scotland and another local I haven't seen in awhile. It'll be nice. I need to decompress. I mean, until morning - when it starts up again. And then gets interrupted by this interview in the afternoon. So we'll see how much work I get done tomorrow. It HAS to be more/better than 300 words.

Suggestion: DEATHMARCH AHOY

Point of note: Since the beginning of the month, I have written 24,242 words of fiction on Fiddlehead. Christ on a cracker.