Today is the day that I am supposed to finish archiving all of the data from what I call "The Ghost Realm." This continuity includes the short stories "The Ghost in the Olive Grove" and "Night Light." In my head, I consider these stories part of the Nightfire universe, but there has never been a natural cross-reference, and I am loath to force one. Therefore, they shall remain officially separate until they prove themselves otherwise.

I'm not finished, but I'm getting there. I will be done by the end of the night. I've got the production archives complete. I'm just wrapping up all of my character notes and such and filing them accordingly. It's tedium.

Something that I've learned doing this...I hate "Night Light." I'm pleased with it artistically. I think that it's very well written, and the characters are nicely developed. I just hate reading it. It makes me uncomfortable. It's disturbing, the way that it ends. The fact that I wrote the ending is what disturbs me most, I think. Now that I have had children in my life, I can think of nothing more horrible than anything hurting them. Especially the idea of them being eaten by something so mercilessly. It fills me with absolute horror. To think that when I wrote the story seven or eight years ago, it actually struck me as funny. Parts of it still are funny to me...just not the end. It was never about the child though. It was really about the mother. The moral was that there was a natural consequence for being a negligent, self-centered mother. It was an extreme illustration, I know, but writing is melodrama. At least for me. That's what makes fiction so entertaining. My point is, "Night Light" does not entertain me anymore. It horrifies me. How strange it is, this power children have to alter one's perspective so completely.

Tomorrow I'll begin the task of archiving past projects from the Nightfire Realm.