Okay, I just sent Haunted Halls back to the editor! I know she is going to say “Wow!” Then she is either going to say, “You just made this story amazing,” or she is going to say, “What did you do to this poor story?” Honestly, it could go either way. I have completely lost my confidence in knowing if a story is any good or not. Absolutely gone. I just pour everything I’ve got into it, and then stop. I’m noticing all the time now that reviewers are enjoying things that I didn’t remotely do on purpose and overlooking details I agonized over. Writing is a strange, strange business. One needs to supercharge the brain, and disconnect it at the same time. And I suspect that only other writers have a clue what that feels like.
All that aside, I’m excited for Haunted Halls to come out. There’s an awful lot of the real me in this story. Whoever that is.