More of The Golden Mystery is posted, starting here.

Two more weeks for this story, I estimate. After that, I think I will take a break.

I was planning to do that back in March (as I wrote about here), but then I got the idea for The Family Murder Case (mostly because I knew I had to do something with Claudia and Erika), and then I got the idea for The Golden Mystery (which came to me, the whole thing, in about 24 hours).

But now I do intend to take that break. There are at least two more mystery stories that I plan to write at some point (one short one, and at one or two longer ones). I may restructure the utownwriting.com blog as well, since the part-by-part posting is great when the stories are in progress, but they may not be the ideal format when the stories are complete.

So, the updates here may be on a more relaxed schedule. And I may write a bit about some other things.

I've been thinking about writing something about Frank McCourt (who I still think of as "Mr. McCourt"). He was one of my favorite teachers, but I feel bad writing about him if I don't also write about Thomas Dolan, Maurice Baudin, and M. L. Rosenthal. They had just as much effect on me, they just never wrote best-selling memoirs. So, I would want to write about them all, if I was going to write about any of them.

Oh, and I just bought Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon. I bought it Wednesday (it came out on Tuesday, but I was delayed by a colonoscopy). I remember buying Against the Day on the first day it was available, too, but I never finished it. But Inherent Vice is shorter and (according to initial reports) funnier, so that should make a difference. Maybe I'll specialize in Pynchon's shorter novels from here on.

I knew it was a bad sign when I was reading Against the Day (I made it to around page 200) that the biggest pleasure I got out of the whole thing was finding a typo.

Speaking of which, did you ever notice that all of "the short ones" (The Crying of Lot 9, Vineland, and Inherent Vice) are set in California, and none of the long ones are? I'll bet that's significant...