This morning I got up after sleeping in until 9:00, and started on the dishes. The kitchen is always a mess after Halloween. For some reason cleaning the kitchen is one of those chores that I find relaxing. I can do it without much thinking, and the things I do have to actually think about are of such low consequence, that the decisions feel safe.

We take Halloween seriously at Chez Tolladay. Yesterday I put in over 14k steps setting up all the things we hadn’t gotten to yet in our front yard. In many ways it was our best Halloween yet, in terms of how the house looked. We had very few trick-or-treaters, but that’s a on-going trend. The neighborhood has been slowing changing over the years. There are less middle class families with kids, and more rich older people, or (because we live in an orthodox neighbor) more orthodox jews who do not participate in secular holidays. Still we had fun and the house looked cool. We added a new bubble fogger, and a new witch to the ensemble, which was nice. Mostly we made ourselves happy, which frankly is the goal.

Halloween for us is very much like a theater production. The fun is not in doing the same thing over and over, but in the rush to try to make things new and fresh with that same blank canvas. The fun is not in pleasing the audience, but in building something that meets our ever expanding and harshly critical standards. There was still a lot we didn’t get to, but there’s always next year.

Every year our son had gotten more and more into pumpkin carving. This year we bought out new tools as he experimented with shaving off parts of the outer skin. This lead to a healthy discussion afterwards about carving so the light can come through in some places better than others. In essence, using the thickness of the pumpkin rind as an element to one’s design. We realized more experimentation was in order, then he pointed to the three un-carved pumpkins we have in the yard that I use as props for a singing pumpkins projection. Looks like we’ll be experimenting with them before the end of the week. Looking forward to that.

October was also the first time I went through edits for a story. Gotta say, I found it pretty exciting. Almost everything to do with my story “C’mon Boys” is going to be exiting to me because it’s my first professional sale. Everything is new and fun when seen through that narrow lens. But I’ve also been enjoying the process because the editor I am working with, Joel Troutman, is so very kind. By way of comparison, the notes I get for edits to the art that I work on in my day job are so much more blunt that it is almost comical. It’s like talking to a therapist, and then immediacy afterwards talking to that neighbor from Brooklyn who is one of those types that needs to project their “New Yorker” attitude at everyone.

The story should be out mid December. I will be posting links when I have them.

As to writing, this month was pretty productive. Except for the first week that I missed from illness, I really cranked on the second novel in the Speaker for the Dead series. Yesterday I outlined the last 3 chapters that need writing. Roughly 10k words to go, or about two weeks if I’m being productive. Hopefully, by Mid November I will finally set that beast aside, and turn to some other things.

I also cranked out a very short story (slightly over 1000 words) about visitors from the future coming to Los Angeles. Not sure what I’m going to do with it yet. It will need to go through a month of sitting, and another pass of edits, before being sent to my favorite beta reader (hello Val). After that, we’ll see. Hopefully it will find a good home.

All that to say it’s been a big month for me, writing wise. I have other news, one of my stories is in contention at another small magazine, but I don’t want to say more until I know for sure they will publish it. It looks as if they have more stories than they have space, so they need to do a second round of cuts. Obviously, I hope they pick mine, but they have decisions to make that I am not aware of, and I trust they know what the hell they are doing. Yo, small businesses are hard to manage. I know from experience having started 4 or 5. Regards if they pick me or not, I wish them well.