Welcome back to another week in my wacky world of Words and How I Strive to String Them Together. I’m not sure if this says more about me or you, but I found it interesting that last week’s creepy cop story (“So Glad They Included Me”) received an overwhelming amount of love from you, my semi-loyal readers. I do like to occasionally take those deep dives into the dark and twisted recesses of my mind, and apparently, I’m not alone. For those of you who enjoyed the ride last week, I have but two words for you: Seek help🙃

Now let’s get into this week’s entry. An anonymous donor supplied the prompt.

                 Suture Self

Steven, perpetual bargain hunter, was bragging about his upcoming eye surgery at Dave’s Discount Docs.

Bradley winced. “Sounds kinda scary.”

“They have two categories for everything: Best Practices, (yeah, right) or Roll the Dice (a definite no-brainer). I’m not getting ripped off like most suckers.”

“Wow.”

“For anesthesia type, I picked Just Distract Me, and for sterilization, I chose Use Clean-ish Instruments.”

After surgery, Bradley drove into the recovery carport to visit Steven, now blind.

Bradley waved dead flowers under Steven’s nose.

“These stink.”

Bradley chuckled. “Got ‘em at a used flower shop. You wouldn’t want me getting ripped off, right?”

Prompt: Please wash your hands

QUESTIONABLE CHARACTERS UPDATE:

On the novel-writing front, my goal was to do a lot of major chopping by today, ideally getting my manuscript down to around 90,000 words. While I feel pretty good about the progress I made, I can’t declare mission accomplished in the word count department. As we go to press today I’m still over 100,000 words but … The weather out here on the coast is pretty nice and I have a fully charged laptop so … I’m thinking about heading out to the beach in a while to do some more slicing and dicing. Based on a conversation I had last week (more on that in a sec), I’m now feeling OK about coming in somewhere under 100K words. Additionally, I don’t feel like I’ve been wasting my time, as each edit has been for the best and I’m constantly improving things and tightening up the writing.

In my search for an editor, I found someone I think will be a good fit. In a call last week, her assistant convinced me I shouldn’t worry too much about where I am now with the word count because the developmental editor will provide a lot of notes regarding areas that can be cut. Hearing that made me feel a bit better about sending along a bigger manuscript (even though I know there will be blood—lots of blood, when it comes to cutting to the bone to make the story the best I can possibly deliver). I should have some kind of update on the editor front next week.

In other news, last week I mentioned that I’d be going to a poetry slam to read some of my 101-word stories. Didn’t happen. Well, technically, I did show up at the venue, but I did so a few days early since I couldn’t get any responses to multiple attempts to reach the bookstore hosting the event. When I finally met with the owner, she told me they were only looking for poetry, but she suggested a couple of popular places with open mic nights. I hit one at The Creperie in Seaside where I had an awesome time. They even seemed to like my little stories. I will be back, much like I’ll be back here next week with more of whatever this is.

Thanks for listening.

Scotty out