So far, the only way the great Microsoft Outage of 2026 impacted me was that I couldn’t get into Teams for last night’s Scares That Care board meeting.
I sort of hope it zeroed my Outlook inbox, though. I know that would suck for a lot of folks and businesses, but a reset on email inboxes would personally be great for me. No more staring at 5,000 (or more) unread emails. Start from scratch.
I’ll see if it has impacted Word after this. That’s the only one I’m concerned about (although the latest novel I’m working on — The End: The Labyrinth Book 5 — is not being written using Word at all. I’m doing the first draft on Patreon, and then pasting it directly into Vellum, which I’ve been using since the launch of Manhattan On Mars. Despite having used Word since 1998 or so, I have been very seriously considering switching to using Vellum for everything going forward. This might be the impetus to do so.
For those with an interest in such things, here’s a behind the scenes: Everything I wrote up to and including the stuff in No Rest For the Wicked and the first drafts of The Rising and Earthworm Gods (novella) were written on a Brother WP3400 word processor. Everything from 4X4 up to Falling Angels: The Labyrinth Book 4 were written with Microsoft Word. The stuff released via Manhattan On Mars has so far been written in Word and then converted into Vellum during the post-production stage).
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Women In Horror Year: Day 144
Descent by Sandy DeLuca
A beautiful young painter falls in love with a dangerously sexy man who may be in league with the Devil ... who may even be a devil. So begins her DESCENT into a world of violence and horror, a world of rituals and madness and unspeakable cruelty. Can she retain her soul despite the things he does to her, the things he forces her to witness ... the things he forces her to do? When you dance with the Devil, can you ever make it stop?
Originally published as a signed limited edition hardcover back in 2005 during the golden age of Delirium Books, Sandy DeLuca’s Descent is harrowing, uncomfortable read. There’s dark, and then there’s obsidian, and this novel very much falls into the latter category. Think Natural Born Killers, Jack Ketchum’s The Girl Next Door, or Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska title track, but even more devastating.
Told in two different time periods, the story focuses on Julia, who — as a teenager — has a horrible, abusive childhood. She falls under the sway of an absolute human monster named Sammy. who takes her on a cross-country trip into hell, also taking what innocence Julia has remaining, her virginity, her moral qualms, and quite possibly her sanity in the process.
The prose is smart, literate, and razor-sharp, which only makes the atrocities within that much more disturbing and impactful. Sandy does a fantastic job of getting in these character’s heads, including Sammy’s. As a writer, I remember reading this back in 2005 and worrying afterward. We all know how it can impact us, living with certain characters or novels-in-progress for too long. This is not a world where, as a writer, iId want to stay, but as a reader? As a reader, it’s a phenomenal journey, well worth the trip.
For those who want more HORROR in their horror, I highly recommend this.
Descent is available in paperback and eBook from Uninvited Books.
