"Decatur, Almost: A Farewell in Progress"

They’ve crossed thresholds with me, spine by spine, like old friends who never ask why.

Sometimes a story grips you so tightly that the world beyond its pages dissolves, and all the tasks of daily living—packing boxes, canceling utilities, forwarding mail—seem strangely pale beside the fevered heartbeat of fiction.

This is one of those moments.

If this is the final blog I write at this address, let it be a testament to the magnetic pull of Painted People, a story that’s become more real, more urgent, than the logistics of leaving or the map of what comes next.

The house is full of lists and half-filled boxes, yet my mind lingers in the twilight world of Twin Peaks, San Francisco, where Klara Belinsky stands on the cusp of everything.

I find myself torn—not just between fiction and reality, but between the gentle closure of one chapter and the suspenseful promise of another.

It’s a peculiar envy: wishing for an assistant or partner to share in the chaos, someone to shoulder the mundane so I can remain immersed in the fever pitch of Painted People’s climax.

There’s an irony here that’s hard to ignore. Life demands I set down my pen and tend to the necessary, but the story demands everything.

The murder at the story’s core—unresolved, pressing—calls out even in the late hours when the city goes quiet and again in the pale light of morning. Painted People is at a pivotal moment; to leave it unfinished feels almost like a betrayal, yet the world insists.

So, for what may be the last lines composed in this house, I offer the keynotes of this journey.

And as an offering, an excerpt—perhaps too long, but entirely necessary:

Painted People Excerpt: Chapter 21
ACT 1 -Eye Witness
It was a heartbeat past midnight—a single minute pulled into sharp focus by the echo of gunfire. The city lay breathless in the cradle of the beginning of the next day after Christmas, but for Klara Belinsky, sleep vanished the instant the three shots ripped the silence apart. The staccato cracks weren’t fireworks, though for an instant, her mind tried to pretend they were.

She jerked upright in bed, pulse hammering in her ears, and stumbled toward the window. The Erikson house loomed below on Pemberton Steps, but Klara’s world had shrunk to the slice of night she could see through the trembling slit in her curtains. The chill of the glass seeped through, but her instincts begged her closer—closer to the unknown.

Beyond the pane, the world had gone jagged. Figures burst out of shadow like wraiths, their movements desperate and erratic, limbs flailing through shafts of sodium light. The far-off wail of sirens—were they drawing nearer, or was it just the blood roaring in her ears? Even on Christmas there were always fires, always chaos, but this...this was different.

A bladed wind knifed through the loose seal of her window, carrying the smell of cordite and panic. Klara pressed her forehead to the icy pane, fingers white-knuckled on the curtain. Down on the pavement, a woman with a mess of red hair hurtled away from the carnage, her blue jacket a flare against the gloom. The jacket snapped and fluttered wildly—Klara could almost feel the terror radiating from the stranger, the animal need to escape.

Then she saw the car—a white coupe, its headlights slashing the dark, engine shuddering. It was parked askew, as if its driver had abandoned all thought of order. The logo—a blur of silver, Omni? BMW? The details swam, not quite in focus, but the coupe’s shape was burned into her vision. That roof window, half open to the bitter air—it was a small thing, but maybe important.

Klara’s heart was running wild, ready to bolt from her chest. She dug her nails into her palm, fighting the urge to look away. She forced herself to drink in the details: the color of the car, the woman’s frantic sprint, the way the streetlight cast the alley in a shifting, almost predatory glow. Every movement outside was a threat—every shadow, a warning.

A phone was in her hand, though Klara didn’t remember reaching for it. The cold plastic was slick with sweat. Her lungs constricted, and for a trembling second, she wondered if she’d managed to breathe at all. The streetlamp flickered, throwing claws of shadow across her walls, and her own reflection stared back, ghostlike, wide-eyed.

She hesitated, knuckles hovering over the keypad. Calling 911 would mean stepping into this nightmare, making it real. Her mind spun with dread—what if they could see her? What if the shooter was still there? But the sound of another siren, closer this time, snapped her into action. Someone might be dying. Someone might need her.

There: the night’s pulse, the chill, the knife-edge of danger. The fiction feels so much more alive than the boxes stacked in the hallway. Painted People is not finished, not really, but our time here is.

And so, as I turn my attention to the business of moving—canceling this, transferring that, letting go—I carry Klara and her feverish story forward, knowing that fiction waits faithfully for its author’s return.

If this is goodbye to writing at this address, let it be with gratitude: for the stories that have sustained me and for the possibility of picking up the thread somewhere new.
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Here’s to Painted People, to unfinished business, to all the worlds we inhabit—on the page and beyond.

Onward and upward, even as we pack away the past.