Writing haunted places, accidental mornings, and uncanny connections
Behind the Pages: Chapters 3–5
These chapters were where the story stopped whispering and started breathing. By Chapter 3, Nicola’s no longer just coming home. She’s walking into something that remembers her too well. Her grandparents’ house greets her with a flicker of porch light after a drop of blood hits the threshold. A wound for a welcome. And the house, it responds, because in this story, the architecture is sentient, grief-soaked, and holding on.
“She remembers you,” Del said under her breath.
Nicola’s jaw tightened. “Maybe she never went to sleep.”
Writing this section meant letting the setting lead. I stopped treating the house and the land as backdrop and started treating them as characters: resentful, loyal, half-awake. There’s a cypress tree that remembers things better than most people, a garden blooming out of season, and a house that hums when you bleed on the floorboards. Everything feels like it’s watching.
And then Grace Broadchurch enters, barefoot, bleeding, silk-robed, and already halfway into Nicola’s psychic space. Their first meeting feels like a dance that could end in a kiss or a murder charge, depending on who steps first.
“You’re not just here for the case,” Grace says. “You’re here because of this place. It’s in your blood.”
By the time Chapter 5 ends, blood has been spilled, windows shattered, and something old has spoken a name:
“Maenara.”
That name might be the hinge the whole book turns on. But no one knows it yet. Not really.
These chapters felt like descending a staircase in the dark and realizing it goes deeper than you thought. And something’s moving at the bottom.
Words Written: 8290
The Curious Case of the Morning Person
This is not a drill. I woke up early this morning and not just in a pee and doom scroll way. I actually got up, drank coffee, and did things, voluntarily and with pants on, well… old basketball shorts. This is still very new.
Everyone who knows me knows I am a walking cautionary tale about mornings. I am usually the feral raccoon of the household: resentful, puffy-eyed, and vaguely sweaty from perimenopause. My soul doesn’t boot up until at least 10 a.m.
But lately? I’ve been slipping into the dawn like someone trying on a borrowed identity. Not cheerful. Let’s not get delusional, but a quiet, dignified kind of grumpy. Like a cranky librarian ghost who wants to help, but only if you whisper and return your books on time. This stereotype is going to get me in trouble with my wife, but I’m leaving it in to see if she’ll comment.
There’s something in this shift…some strange peace in the early hours. It’s unnerving. Possibly a side quest from my body, but I’m not fighting it. Yet.
Coincidences and Constellations
I joined a writing session yesterday expecting quiet accountability. Instead, I got a mini miracle. First, a writer from near my hometown. We spoke about it’s geology like it was an old friend. The land we both walked? Still there, nodding along.
Then a folk singer, with a great voice, and an accent thick with memory. They named a town from a country where I once lived, and suddenly I was in my twenties again, walking the stone streets with ghosts of my own. The vowels in their voice cracked something open in me.
And then someone else, polished and perceptive, from a politically charged town near my parents. Someone who navigated the same kind of tension I write around but rarely name. And they carried it with grace. I admired them instantly.
The world is supposed to be vast. But sometimes it folds itself up and whispers: See? You’re not so far from anyone. It was uncanny. It was beautiful. It felt like the story was reminding me it isn’t made alone.
Exit Through the Dirt
Every night lately, I’ve been having dreams I don’t remember. I wake with the distinct impression that something happened. Like I borrowed someone else’s dream, wore it like a coat, and left it hanging in the wrong closet.
This morning I woke up with this in my head: “The dirt doesn’t lie if you ask politely.”
Which. Okay. What do you want me to do with that?
Apparently I’m dreaming in Southern gothic riddles now. Makes sense, I guess.
But here’s the truth I keep returning to: the best parts of writing. The strange, the electric, the wild, don’t always come when called. Sometimes they sneak in through the back door of your sleep. Sometimes they hide in your coffee. Sometimes they fall off a shelf just to say hello.
So I’m letting the weirdness in. Dreams, moss, mystery, all of it. The story isn’t done with me yet. And if my subconscious wants to co-author the next scene? Fine, but it better bring snacks with it.
Coming Soon: Chapter 6 Teaser
Nicola returns to the house that made her, only to discover that secrets don’t stay buried and memory has teeth.
“You shouldn’t have come back,” the woman said, voice like static wrapped in silk. Nicola didn’t blink. “I was called.”
“And what calls you,” she said, “might not want you to survive the answer.”
Chapter 6 is where the past stops whispering and starts dragging people by the ankle. You’ve been warned!
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