In an ongoing effort to be accountable to myself I’ve decided to begin – yet again – writing each day on my blog, however to simplify things I’m going to follow a template. It may change from time to time, but basically the plan is to have an ongoing record of my fits and starts at establishing a solid (fiction) writing habit.

My day:

Laundry, washing comforters and sheets and hanging out with the family.

Pretty good day today except for the bugs. They come out when the sun is shining and it’s over 60 degrees Fahrenheit.

If any of you live in Wisconsin, especially the Central to Northern parts, you’ll know what I mean about the Asian ladybugs.

Ugh!

From the Wisconsin DNR website:

Know your friends [friends…ha!]

Multicolored Asian lady beetle, sometimes called the Halloween lady beetle, was brought from Japan to control aphids on trees. It does good work, though can be a nuisance to people when its populations are very high. Nuisance? Puhlease…can I say a PAIN IN THE ASS??

They were introduced into our country by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

A government agency.

Need I say more?

So…anyway…here’s a shot from last year of the lovely little creeps.

Thank God most of them are killed by the poison on the outside of the house.

They leave awful orange stains wherever they crawl so when they get inside we have to wipe off the walls and/or ceilings where some of them have slipped inside to try to spend the winter.

Yeah.

We live in a hundred plus year old farm house, which although it’s got lovely aluminum siding, it’s an old house. There are ways that critters can slip in.

Ah, the fun of this time of year.

Fortunately it doesn’t last all year.

When the weather finally turns cold they’ll stop invading the house and the ones that have slipped in are either dead or have holed up in the walls to wait out the winter.

So yeah, great fun this time of year. Sigh.

The writing:

Not as much done as I wanted, but I’m taking it as a win that I got some done.

Not sure exactly where the story is going, but I still feel that I’m getting close to the end.

Topic of the day:

I’ve been reading Mike Duran’s book on Christian Horror.

As I’ve come to expect from Mike’s writing, he’s thorough in his treatment of the topic. I’m not finished with it yet, but on the outset I will say that I’ve learned that the “horror” genre involves much more than what I call “hack ’em and stack ’em” type of stories.

I suppose I should have realized this but no, I didn’t.

Thanks, Mike for making me think!

And, for helping me realize that the horror genre should be filled with stories written by Christian authors with a Christian worldview.

Now I don’t feel quite so bad when I say that I want to write “dark” Christian fiction.

It seems like an oxymoron, but the way I think of it, it’s not. Not really.

By “dark” I mean real…with a Christian’s take on the darkness that we live among.

I’m still working all of this out in my head, so if it’s confusing, just ignore me.

I’ll get it all sorted out soon enough. 😉

Once I’m done with his book and have finished digesting what I’ve learned I’ll share more.