He's Splat. He's Splat. He's Splat. He's wearing tire tread.

That's Splat.  A major supporting character in Exit The Skin Palace. He's a spirit animal, a mascot for all of us that sink it in the stink now and again but remain fortunate to live in the first world (and even more fortunate to remain out of the destructive reach of the occasional life-altering tropical storm).  

Life runs you over multiple times? Be like Splat. Exercise patience. Just wait for some enraged ectoplasmic pre-teen to come along and revive your ass.

Although coming up short never ever stops being a shit sandwich, purty flowers do appear.  I didn't advance in the Pitch Wars contest, but my-almost-mentor Amelinda Berube took the time to not only read Exit but also to provide invaluable feedback.  

There are a lot of dangling threads at Exit's end.  Mostly because I'm lazy, but also because I realized there was something about Monty Strahl that made me want to spend more time with him and his little corner of ghost-purgatory.  

After Amelinda pointed out the obvious, I did rewrite the next-to-last chapter so one thread is knotted and at least one other is 'loosely' knotted.  

Another beneficial bit about her feedback is its arrival at a moment when I was convinced I suck up to the point where there's no point in continuing to hunt and peck at dark-thirty in the morning.  

I still think I suck as a writer and definitely as my own copy editor, but regarding the latter, if you're just a little guy trying to get some agent/editor/publisher to give you a shot, the cost of professional services is somewhat prohibitive.    

Having said that, tentatively going back through The Lipless Gods via Grammarly, the grammatical horrors pale in comparison to the recoil I feel at my storytelling.  I just want to bust out the cleaver and reduce the MS by fairly one-third.  

I'm still waiting on the one agent that's had the full Exit MS going on six weeks now.  There are others I've queried but at this point I know I can add almost all of them to the big pile of 'no.'  

To stay busy, given the Exit thread-tightening, I can now tweak Surfer On The Drift just a little so the two books complement one another.  And although I thought I'd next tackle my effing brilliant Sylvia Plath/vampires/aliens idea, a third Montgomery Strahl/Dawn book wants to be written.  I have ideas.  Some creature that lives in shadows.  Hella violent conflict between ghost hunters pursuing the same prize. And I've solemnly vowed that this time around Trista will do more than just cause ache in the hollows of my protagonist's chest.