New Mystery Posted to Your Morning Serial

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In Today’s Journal

* A New Short Story
* New Mystery Posted…
* I Finally Read
* The Writing and Other Stuff
* Taking a Moment
* Of Interest
* The Numbers

A New Short Story

“Racing to the Corner” went live yesterday at 10 a.m. on my Stanbrough Writes Substack. In this one I have a conversation with some of my characters. Go check it out. It’s fun and it’s free.

If you enjoy the story, please click Like. Comments are welcome too. Both help with my Substack algorithms. Then tell Everyone else.

New Mystery Posted to Your Morning Serial

Subscribe free and get in on the ground floor of a brand new serialized mystery novel! Click Body Language, Chapter 1.

The opening contains a lot of the description stuff I talked about in yesterday’s post.

I Finally Read

all of Lori Freeland’s “The Power of Paragraphing” yesterday.

I was so impressed I took a little extra time to add it to my Writer Resources over on my author website at harveystanbrough.com. I also added it to Of Interest today as a repeat. It’s that good.

If you haven’t read it yet, click the link in Of Interest. If you don’t, you’re missing out on an extremely good post.

That said, I’m not wild about the examples she uses under “Change of Speaker” and under “Simple tags can be your friends.” If you want to know why, email me.

The Writing and Other Stuff

After almost a whole month of writing almost no fiction (under 6000 words on the month), I think I’m ready to start again in a day or two. My youngest son’s visiting today and tomorrow.

It was an enjoyable break for me, although the brief layoff annoyed my characters to no end. The restart will probably be slow. But soon you’ll be seeing the numbers grow again below.

During that time I also came up with a couple more ideas for one-off (non-series, non-saga) novels. As usual, no conscious thought was involved. The ideas just came to me.

I also decided to do a little math and reset or refocus on my annual goal. In January I planned to write 22 novels on the year. So here’s the math:

Beginning today (August 2) there are 152 days left in the year.

To reach my goal of 22 novels, I need to write a new novel every 16 days. Most of my recent ones have taken only 14 days, so that’s completely doable.

And there’s a built-in buffer. If I write a new novel exactly every 16 days with no “days off,” I’ll hit my goal and have 8 days left over. That makes me feel very good. Even if I fall short of my goal, I’ll take it.

Anyway, I think I need a break from Blackwell Ops for a while. So unless BO-47 takes off sometime in the next few days, I might set that one aside and write something else.

I’ve been reading along with Body Language as a new episode posts each day, and that kind’a has me in the mood to write another stand-alone mystery.

On my other project, I still have to build a new gate, drive a few more t-posts, dig another post hole and set the gate, then string the fence.

Why is it taking so long? Even aside from the fact that I’m almost 73 years old, I can only work on that kind of stuff during the cool of the morning after the sun comes up and before it gets too hot. (grin)

But balancing everything, and figuring out how to balance it, is fun. And there’s no rush. The old fence remains in place until the new gate is up and the new fence is strung, so my wife’s two little sister cats are protected.

Taking a Moment

Some of my TNDJ subscribers come through PayPal. I get to write a quick “Thanks” note to them each time PayPal notifies me of an incoming payment.

But I don’t get notifications from Stripe when a payment comes in from those who subscribe directly through Substack.

So I want to take a moment to say a heartfelt Thank You to all of my paid subscribers. Not only do you help put food on my table and coffee in my cup, but you encourage me to keep this almost-daily Journal going.

Basic subscriptions are and will remain free. The easiest way to become a paid subscriber is probably through Stripe, but you can also subscribe through PayPal by sending $60 to harveystanbrough@gmail.com or by setting up a recurring payment of $5 per month.

That said, I send most posts to all subscribers (free and paid), but I try to send a special gift to paid subscribers now and then to help balance things out.

Anyway, my sincere thanks for enabling all this craziness.

Talk with you again soon.

Of Interest

The Power of Paragraphing

The Numbers

The Journal…………………………… 810

Writing of Blackwell Ops 47: Sam Granger | Special Duty

Day 1…… 3250 words. To date…… 3250

Fiction for August..………………….. XXXX
Fiction for 2025………………………. 526647
Nonfiction for August………………… 1240
Nonfiction for 2025…………………… 169640
2025 consumable words…………….. 688673

2025 Novels to Date…………………….. 13
2025 Novellas to Date…………………… 0
2025 Short Stories to Date……………… 31
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………….. 117
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)…………… 10
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)……… 301
Short story collections……………………. 29

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Questions are always welcome at harveystanbrough@gmail.com. But please limit yourself to the topics of writing and publishing.