Total: 32,300 words.
Current short story ("Healing Stone Springs"): 5,900 words, and the draft is done. I can already think of some earlier scenes it will need, and I've written down the ideas, but the story is going into the queue of first drafts to rest, while I revise the ones that came before it and write more new ones.
In other news: I still haven't had a conversation with Helmut, although we've each left a message on the other's cell phone. Hearing a voice remembered from sixteen years earlier does interesting things to a brain... I immediately saw a series of scenes from my past, and even smelled the paint-and-charcoal scent of the art building where I first met him when I was a freshman in college, and I remembered people and parties that I hadn't thought about in a long time--not just the main friends we had in common, but the ones who only showed up once in a while. I wonder what will happen when we talk interactively.
