Shh…

I snuck out.

Okay, truth be told, Ginny shoved me out here. I’m sure you can imagine what that was like.

Anyway, Ginny has an idea to get the author out of her slump. A challenge. A spitball gauntlet. Dare I say, a dare?

See, the author is obsessed with her word counts, which is half the reason she’s miserable: she’s been falling short. She’s got this weird spreadsheet thing that I’m sure only the Anal Retentive One could appreciate. Individual book totals, series totals, etc. divided by years. That big cumulative total passed 860,000 today, and the author got a fleeting thrill from it as she slogs to a million.

And that little thrill was what got Ginny thinking…

The official LAC series (books 1-13) total is 491,762. Ginny said that’s awfully, awfully close to half a million words. Kris called it striking distance. I called it spitting distance. My favorite project manager called it approaching a milestone. The schoolteacher called it 8,238 words to go. Maggie called it cool. Janice called it flippin’ cool, even though she was “excluded” from the first book. Alison wanted to know what having half a million words actually meant. Holly and Laura … well … the artist and the detective took it as an excuse to slink off and kiss that many times—no surprise there.

Do you see where Ginny’s going with this? Even I do so I suspect it’s a piece of cake for you. The slumping one needs a kick in the ass. She needs to stop fretting over the Wilde commas and remember what’s important. Write, writer! Right?

So, at Ginny’s behest, I am taking my life in my hands…

Hey, Roz, we D Double D dare you to hit 500,000 LAC words by Monday the 26th!

Okay, now I’m running the hell out of here. Hey, but keep an eye on that meter thing in the left menu over there. I promise to keep updating it.