Well, she passed 30,000 words today. She has 19,287 to go. With a good pair of binoculars, we may be able to see the finish line … and a gurney … and a straight jacket … and … and … what’s that? … oh, that damn bottle of tequila.

She is almost finished with Chapter 2 of the as-yet-unnamed LAC 14. Yes, I, too, think it needs a title. With it being an even number, it warrants an l-word+1 title. Someone suggested Lemon Peppers, which I thought was kind of cool … at least until he said he happened upon a picture of lemon pepper tofu. I don’t even want to know what the hell that looks like.

Anyway, I wish I could swipe the chapters and post them for you, but when the author says ‘rough,’ she is not talking about dogs. I do believe she’d kill me, which would make her have to begin another Laura book just to solve my murder, and we sure as hell can’t have that.

And, no, Sutures is still not complete. She’s thinking that having two files for it and not being able to edit either make her unable to see the whole. Apparently, you cannot end what you cannot see. We know how it ended and are happy to be in the next one. Whose weekend is it?

Drum roll please….

We have reached the month’s mid-point! Her word count is still ahead!

She decided to add an epilogue to Sutures and then got tripped up on a few paragraphs. In fear of failing behind, she kept going and moved on to LAC 14. Good news for us. No tequila for her. That is as it should be, in my mind anyway.

Oh, and a thank-you to the smartass who sent a picture of herself eating a circus peanut just to prove a point.

She has moved into Sutures’ final chapter, people.

“Get a move on! The [book] is about to climax!”

And, Jesus, somebody hide the tequila bottle. If she finishes the book with the traditional margarita, that NaNoWriMo will turn into a PiNkElePhant.

She tops 20,000! Still about a day ahead of schedule.

She’s figuring there’s about a chapter and a half left on Sutures. She’ll have a very rough draft, which she’ll have to combine with what she had last month. With the NaNo clock still a’tickin’, though, she’ll launch into the nameless book 14. Sutures will start getting its edit on December 1st. Okay, maybe we’ll let her have a day off.

Amen, she finished the first week! She’s 1,334 words ahead of schedule. Not bad for a galumphing slumper. Not bad at all.

And, oh gee, only 23 more days to go.

Holy shit, we need a vacation in here! This working for circus peanuts from a cranky, overly-caffeinated author is frickin’ insane. We should be getting hazard pay.

Ah, but she’s nearing the end of Sutures, and we happen to know LAC 14 is going to be a blast.

Well, we kind of got off to a bad start today. We sort of took over her bath tub, nearly drowned her with LAC 14 ideas. But, she yelled at us enough that we finally got with the program. For some odd reason, she is bribing us with circus peanuts. Who the hell eats circus peanuts?

And all those ideas… Well, she’ll thank us if/when she’s scrambling to start LAC 14 with the NaNoWriMo clock still ticking. Authors do not always know best.

Okay, which ones of you doubted we could behave? Come on, raise those hands, you big chickens!

Look at that orange bar! After three days, she’s even a bit ahead of the game. No doubt, that is courtesy of the yours trulies, also known as the DWD.

But, holy shit, it has been really hard staying on task! She has proven to be a tough taskmaster when she needs to be. We caught hell this morning for zooming ahead to LAC 14. Yeah, we know she’s right: 14 can’t really take place until 13 owns its own pages. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But, we are getting there!

Uh, remember when we issued that D Double D dare to our dear author? Yeah, she did it and broke the half-mil ceiling. You’d think she’d simply have galumphed on her merry way. But, oh, not Roz.

It seems this morning she signed up for National Novel Writing Month, with the goal of writing 50,000 words during the month of November. She’s taken “rebel” status—I’m sure that surprises everyone—because she intends to work on something already in progress, rather than on something “from scratch” as the rules dictate. That in-progress thing would be Sutures, book 13, and she has sworn to jump into LAC 14 in her quest for the prize.

That seems like a very lofty goal for one in a slump, but she is a writer, after all. So, at the same time, it makes perfect sense. Except for one itty-bitty snag. And, yes, that involves your beloved DWD.

She has D Double D dared us to behave ourselves for the month of November: to stay on task and not jump ahead; to proceed through Sutures in a linear fashion; to keep at it and not slough off; do what we need to do to complete the weekend; and then do the same for LAC 14. Seriously, she has dared us to behave! Behave! Isn’t that like asking us not to be ourselves or something? Wouldn’t that make us characters out of character? But then again, a dare is a horribly tempting sort of thing, not one we generally pass on, no matter how foolish. Truth be told, though, naked cannonballs sound much easier than this. Even Dare Devil Laura isn’t so cocky on this one, and that should make us all tremble in fear.

Everybody please, please, please cross your fingers on this one! We will never, ever live this down.

So, that little orange bar up yonder gets a new title and a different task. If any of you have a talent for telekinesis, now would be the time to show off.