DONE!

Yes, I am DONE with the book. It isn't finished finished, but I have reached the end of it.

Now it is time to type it all in the computer. (Remember, I'm freakish throwback write-it-in-longhand person.) And then I have to whack out all the excess verbiage. I don't think there will be quite as much excess as there was in ETERNAL ROSE, but there may be a little more excess than there was in NEW BLOOD. I also have to make sure the story arc is an actual arc, rather than a... well, I'm not sure what geometric form would fit. My characters seem to take two steps forward, then one step back--and that can work, but I need to make sure it does, and isn't too jerky, and they're not behaving too jerkishly. Or that they're dropping their jerkishness (because a black moment tends to involve some of that) too soon. And then, I also need to make sure the action stays high... This one's more of a murder mystery, so it's more clue-finding than bad-guy fighting. I'm worried about that action issue...

Anyway, that's where I am. Literally. Working on the book. So I'm not here.

Whining ensues. If you don't want to read whining, then just skip this part. I'm only here now because the other community news person is back from going to the inauguration in D.C. I had read in the paper that she was going. (I know, I know, but her office isn't in the big bullpen-type newsroom, and I have to get up and go walk in there to talk to her, instead of yelling across the room, like I talk to everybody else.) But I forgot, and found out, the day before she was leaving, that she was leaving me this HUGE job--that I'd never done before. And it HAD to be done that next day. Had to.

So I came in to the paper at my regular time (after lunch), all worried about how I was going to get that done, AND my regular stuff, and discovered in the note she left me that she wanted me to come in early the three mornings she was going to be out of town, so I could cover all the other stuff she does. (She did do some of it, but there's a lot of stuff you can't do till the day of.) Thing is, if she'd talked to me before she left town, I'd've told her that I was on deadline with the book, and I really couldn't spare a whole lot of time to come in and work. I wound up coming in at 11 a.m. or so, and having lunch at my desk, and still wound up having to stay late, just to get stuff done. Anyway, she's back now. So I'm not running quite so fast. I'll get out of here before six today.

End of whining.

In other news, we have a contract on our house in the Panhandle, so we'll probably have to go up there to clean things out and sign at the end of the month. Which means I have to get the revisions finished, before we go. Or I could revise on the road. Anyway, it's a good thing, but a... complicating factor.

Okay. I'm going home.