Made it to today’s goal. Tomorrow, to get back on track, I’ll have to hit 30k. I’m going to give it my best shot. I was working pretty steadily today to get the 6632 words. Ten thousand will be a little tougher. If I can at least get close, I think I’ll still be in the running to finish.<\/p>\n
I think I’ll post a little excerpt. Tony has just been diagnosed as being HIV+. His daughter, Cheryl, (the MC) is visiting her maternal grandparents in Maine. She’s been gone about a month. Cheryl’s mother committed suicide when Cheryl was nearly four. I use “Cheryl’s mother” because I haven’t given her a name yet. In the earlier part of the story, I may have given her a name, but I’ve forgotten it. To make it easier to find and replace when the poor character gets a name, I’ve chosen this convention.<\/p>\n
NOTE: This stuff may NEVER see print. Even so, please don\u2019t repost, quote or copy the following excerpt. It is copyrighted, and I have hope it could someday be published.<\/p>\n
————————–<\/p>\n
Three weeks later, the test results came back, and they made him come in for counseling in person. <\/span> They explained to him that with his sexual history, any one of the women he’d been with could have been with someone who transmitted the virus to her, and she had spread it to him. <\/span>Sorry, They spent hours in counseling with him that day. <\/span>Before they would let him leave, they made him sign a statement informing him that if he didn’t inform sexual partners about his infection and use a condom every single time he had sex, he could be prosecuted. <\/span> He walked through the house, seeing it for the first time. <\/span> He turned to the bathroom he’d been using without looking at it for years. <\/span>He’d missed the toilet a few times. <\/span>There was a yellow ring around the base of the toilet. <\/span>The tub had a dark ring where his shower water drained slowly. <\/span>The sink was spattered with dark dirt from years of hand washing but no sink washing. <\/span>He walked through What was in these cabinets? <\/span>He couldn’t remember the last time he’d opened them. <\/span>The counters were dirty and littered with junk and trash. <\/span>The floor was filthy. <\/span>Trash overflowed the can — he guessed He dropped his hand that held the broken window blind away to reveal the overgrown back yard. <\/span>He trudged to the front window and lifted a blind, peering through. <\/span>The front yard was also overgrown but not as bad as the back yard. <\/span>It was a postage stamp-sized yard to begin with. <\/span>There was a weedeater and electrical cord under the eaves. <\/span> Made it to today’s goal. Tomorrow, to get back on track, I’ll have to hit 30k. I’m going to give it my best shot. I was working pretty steadily today to get the 6632 words. Ten thousand will be a little tougher. If I can at least get close, I …<\/span> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[58],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1331","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hotcoffee"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1331","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1331"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1331\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1331"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1331"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1331"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}