Obsession = The End

Well, I've banished the mind monkey, as per my last post, and instead of staying off the interwebs to effort to remain focused, I've been off – easily, tirelessly, for hours – because I'm careening downhill in the last few thousand words of my story. It always happens this way at the end. Where I might struggle just to get to the page when I'm 45K in, by this time (nearing my 120K goal) I'm working twelve-hour days without even coming up for a breath. I'm effectively obsessed.

My initial goal was to hand the book in at the end of April, but the climax* grew unwieldy and had to be reimagined … oh, three or four times. Let me add that this is impossibly frustrating when you just want to be done, but I know that won't happen if I don't pause to think it through, to reimagine, to invent anew.

So I did. And now I've six pages left to work through, but that'll easily double by the time I'm done. Meanwhile, my mind is starting to sizzle with all the things I have planned for when the book is turned in – namely this newsletter I want to get out announcing a sah-weet giveaway for my longtime readers. I've created a fun freebie for the first time, mostly because I wanted to commemorate the end of the Zodiac series that has meant so much to me – personally and professionally. I spent a bit more than I wanted on designing and producing this item, but I suppose some things shouldn't be measured that way. I love them, that's what's important, and I think my readers will adore them too.

And just because I happen to loathe it when authors tease their readers ("It's a super secret project that requires lots of *squeeing* and exclamation points but I'm not going to tell you what it is!!!!" *barf*), here's a visual. This:

Yes – real, clay poker chips. You've got Vegas, you've got Joanna, and you've got a viable way to play soul poker, if you so choose. I'll soon be sending them out, along with a newly designed bookplate, signed by me, for your copy of THE NEON GRAVEYARD. (Only 28 days to go now!)

I'll be back later to tell you how you can get this for free, but first … I really do want to finish this book.

*This may be interesting to no one but another writer, but I've noted in the last two manuscripts that I've "saved" my climax for last. I write up to it, give it a quick and dirty outline/paragraph description – something extraordinarily helpful, like 'Bad guy dies' – and skip directly to the dénouement. When I work through the next draft, which is where I cross all my 'Ts' and dot all my 'Is', I then write it. You'd be amazed at how the story changes when you're pecking through word choice with the precision of a surgeon. More amazing, though, is that I seem to have been doing this intuitively. I thought I was just being lazy, but no. Patterns = process.

Okay. As you were!