Six Weeks In, 90K Words… and This Changed Everything
Six days a week. No excuses. And the ghost story that’s been waiting for me.
Six weeks ago, I stopped waiting for the perfect mood to write. I stopped treating this book like a dream I might finish someday. Instead, I treated it like a job — one I had to show up for six days a week, feel like it or not. That single shift changed everything.
Since then, I’ve been living inside another world—small-town New England, 1988—and the deeper I go, the harder it is to leave when I close the laptop for the day.
My mornings start in the library. Same table. Same seat. The one where the sunlight cuts across the desk at about 9:15, warming one arm even as the nearby AC vent freezes the rest of me.
I hadn’t been in a library in years, and there’s something both comforting and ironic about being surrounded by thousands of books while trying to finish one of my own.
I sit with my coffee going lukewarm, my notebook half-filled with scrawls I’ll probably never read again, and my screen blinking back at me like it knows the ending and refuses to tell me. But showing up every day makes the story spill out, even on the days it feels like chiseling words from solid rock.
Six Weeks In — What I’ve Learned
I’m around 90,000 words now and proud to say I’ve hit my weekly word count goals for six weeks straight.
It’s exhausting most days. Exhilarating on others. Some mornings it feels like something else is moving my fingers while I just watch. Other mornings, it’s like pushing through the last painful reps of an exercise. But most days? It’s just work. Work I love, but still work. Not the candlelit romance we imagine when we picture “the writing life.”
I’m still finding my balance—enough to hit my word count, but still have something left in the tank for the rest of my day and my life. Writing at full focus for hours is its own kind of drain.
The glove fits, though. I’m grateful to be here, to have the time and space to do this. The most exciting moments are when the story takes on a life of its own—when characters say things I didn’t see coming, or the plot veers somewhere unexpected. That’s the high that keeps me showing up, even knowing there’s no guarantee this book will sell or that anyone will ever read it.
The photo in this post is me writing in the car on the way home from vacation a few weeks ago. Not only did my poor wife have to drive, she also had to wait for me to hit my word count each morning before we made it to the breakfast buffet before it closed. Her patience is the quiet backbone of this whole project, and I couldn’t do any of this without her.
Excerpt – Page One
The teenage years lie somewhere between childhood and sanity, and Mark Russo could hardly hold onto his as he scribbled a note on the back of a summer reading list. The purple ink bled across the white ditto paper, and he fought the urge to inhale, chasing the tease of a mimeograph high.
It was 1986, the last day of school at Roger Williams Junior High. The air in the classroom was thick, rank with the stink of seafood trash left to bake in the sun. The teacher cracked open the windows and killed the blinding fluorescent lights, as if that would make it any cooler.
About the Book
Mark Russo is haunted—literally. The ghost of his murdered girlfriend won’t leave him alone, desperate to lead him to her killer. But in the small New England town of Wellington, the truth is buried deep, and some secrets are guarded by the living as fiercely as the dead.
Detective John Murphy has seen his share of darkness, but nothing like this. Still reeling from his own failures and drowning in guilt, Murphy is drawn into a case that will test his sanity and force him to confront the possibility that evil doesn’t always wear a human face.
As Mark and Murphy’s paths collide, a predator moves unseen through their town. Every clue leads to another dead end, every shadow hides a threat, and the line between the natural and the supernatural blurs until neither of them can tell where one ends and the other begins.
Because in Wellington, the most dangerous thing in the dark might not be the ghost.
It might be the person standing right behind you.
I’ll be sharing more in the coming weeks. For now, I hope this first glimpse sparks your curiosity and maybe leaves you with that quiet, unsettled feeling I’m always chasing when I read a great opening.
Thank you for being part of this journey with me.
It's 3 AM. Do you know where your children are?
-T.C.
What’s Next
Next Thursday’s issue will explore “The Visible and the Invisible” — a dive into what we notice, what we miss, and the strange spaces in between.
Two weeks from today, you’ll get more of the first chapter of The In-Between—just enough to leave you hanging at the moment everything shifts. You’ll see the town, meet a few key players, and maybe catch the first faint shadow of what’s haunting Mark Russo.
oh this is gonna be soooo good!
Can't wait to read this. It reminds me of Odd Thomas, one of my all-time favorites.