Yesterday, I attended the Shut Up & Write mini marathon, which takes place the first Saturday of every month, and I accomplished two things. First, I wrote my 7th blog post for the month. Second, I added another thousand words to my short story, which is a follow-up to The Repossessed Ghost.

If you read The Repossessed Ghost, you might have noticed that there is a lot of potential for stories in that world. I’m looking forward to exploring some of those possibilities in the sequel. For this short story, I’m focusing on something relatively small. A bit more than a day-in-the-life, but not much larger. What would it be like if a psychic like Mel Walker was called to serve on a jury?

As a psychic, Mel is able to talk to ghosts, look into the past, and get visions off of objects he touches, experiencing significant events that took place involving the object. With these abilities, he can truly know what happened at a crime scene. He doesn’t have to worry about “reasonable doubt.”

So what happens if the case presented in the court doesn’t match the reality of the event, and Mel is the only one that knows the truth?

I’m really enjoying this story. It’s a little bit longer than I expected so far. I might be able to edit it and trim it some, but I think it’s going to wrap up at just under 15,000 words. That’s novelette territory. It might be too long for the market we were planning for it.

Or, it might be a perfect length, and I shouldn’t worry about it just yet. I’ll worry about the length after I submit it.

It’s a fun story, with some interesting twists and turns that I don’t think anyone is going to see coming.

I don’t explicitly give the year that The Repossessed Ghost takes place, but if you check the foreword, I make it relatively clear that it’s set in 2013. A remarkable number of things have changed in just 10 years, and I’m not sure people have noticed. Ten yeas ago, cell phones weren’t quite as ubiquitous. Ten years ago, marijuana laws were still strict across the country. These are minor points, but they were lightly touched on by the story, which ages it somewhat.

The Psychic on the Jury is set just a few years after The Repossessed Ghost. The short story doesn’t spoil the novel, but it does lightly touch on some things we learn in the first couple of chapters.

I’m really looking forward to this short story being available in the world. I’m not sure when that’ll be, but I’m having a blast writing a sequel story.

It’s not the sequel. I’ll talk more about that tomorrow. This is more of an appetizer. And I’m really glad I’ve been able to make some progress on it recently. I feel like I’ve been dragging this one out forever.

If all goes as planned, the first draft of The Psychic on the Jury will be finished before the end of the month.