I’ve just sent this to the “Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight” patron mailing list, but there appear to be about a dozen people on it who haven’t actually joined the group (please please check your trash/spam to make sure the email didn’t get eaten!), so I’m reposting it here:

I was hoping I could put this off until Wednesday and not have to write it at all, but it’s becoming increasingly clear to me that that’s not the case.

“Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight” is much less interested in being a short story, and far more interested in being a novelette or novella (15-25,000 words) than I had anticipated. I’ve written well over 8,000 words now, and I think it’s going to take that much again, possibly more, to do the story justice.

So I have two choices. I can haul something into shape by Friday, and be dissatisfied with it, or I can miss my deadline and send a much longer, stronger story in two or three more weeks.

I rather hope you’d all prefer the longer story on a slightly delayed timeline. I’m going to set the re-scheduled delivery date as September 1, which I ought to be able to make even if this thing turns out to be forty thousand words long. Which would be silly. >.< I'm extremely embarrassed and apologetic about this, and will do my best to make the story worth the delay.

For the record, for those who hope to buy the story later, this means it won’t be available until December 1st. Possibly I should delay it until February, in that case, so people have some time to get through Christmas before the story’s up for availability…