I did it. I’m finished. Done. However you want to say it.

Of course now the hard work begins.

The rewriting.

Not that writing fifty thousand words in thirty days isn’t hard. It is. Especially in November. There’s Thanksgiving, and my anniversary, which this year coincided with the feast of the big bird day.

I’m proud of me. And I’m digging my story. (Spoiler: the love interest in the story is a successful caterer-I couldn’t resist adding the food element.)

But I’m relieved to get back to my regular schedule: cooking, eating, and writing. Also, Center Street Writers’ Guild workshop begins this Tuesday (I registered five writers), and if all goes according to plan, my weekly food column in the local newspaper, Main Street News, will start up again this month.

But first, here’s a little taste of what I’ve been up to…

Thornton Park: A Thriller

Detective Delgado, a burned-out, widowed, homicide detective, gets the case of his career, a serial killer who is slashing homeless men in a historic neighborhood, three months before his retirement.

When Delgado’s love interest, single, successful catering extraordinaire, Kristina Thomas, is hospitalized from a burglary and attempt on her life, Delgado discovers the killer is his nemesis, Zakhar Wolfthal, Special Ops Army Ranger.

Before Delgado can find and stop Zakhar, bodies pile up and history repeats itself in this harrowing tale of betrayal, lust, and murder.

It was illegal to be in the city park after dark.

Zakhar Wolfthal ignored the posted signs and entered the park on the North-West side on a well-worn footpath where the grass had been beaten down. There were seven paved entrances into the park, but several ways to come and go without being seen. He stepped on the one-mile pedestrian walkway that circled the lake. He’d been coming here for the last year during the day and at night.

He used this entrance at night.

During the day, he sat on one of the wooden benches after he finished his shift, to read a book, or the weekly rag, while he watched walkers and their dogs, young mothers and their baby-strollers, joggers and tourists who’d bring bread from the nearby restaurants to feed the swans, ducks and pigeons. He watched the homeless men and women with an interest bordered on obsessed-the men and women who wandered aimlessly, mumbling to themselves; some played checkers, or read.

Thanks for stopping by,

M