I’m now sure what week this is of ROW80, or what check-in it is. I just know I’m writing like hell and it finally feels good. I shook off the BS fear of writing crap that stuck me last night, and just decided to embrace the writing of crap! So I spewed out about another 2,000 words tonight, and I figured out the next plot twist. I thought I was done, but it didn’t make sense to end there, so what I thought was the big fight at the end of the book ended up just being the lead-up to the Really Big Fight at the end of the book. Then we have a little denouement, and I’m done. I’m not sure how I’m gong to make the reveal happen in the denouement, but I’ll let that sort itself out after I have the Really Big Fight with the deus ex machina (which I’m sweating a little since I used that device in the last book, but I think it kinda needs to happen here, but maybe I can avoid it. I dunno, buy the book, then you can see if I can get the good guys out of this mess alive without resorting to deus ex machina for two books in a row).

But I’m sitting at 46,000 words and change, and while I thought that this book was going to end up longer, now I think it’s actually going to be done at around 55,000 words. Because the story is pretty much over. I have a couple of scenes I’m thinking about dropping in earlier in the book, but I’ve pretty much told the story, and I don’t want to add in scenes that don’t move the story forward. So that’s probably not going to happen. I could flesh things out with more description, but that’s not my style. There are writers out there who do a great job of painting the picture with words, but I’m not them. I’m telling a story, and it’s kind of a fast one. You’re not going to read my books looking for some great meaning of life. You’re going to read them to kill time on the plane, because they’re fun. So I’m not gonna push it. The book will be as long as it is, and that’s just the deal.

Oh, and because I have the attention span of a meth-addicted gnat, Amazon has some killer albums on sale for $5 this month, including a live album by Jason Boland and the Stragglers and the new album from Bleu Edmondson. His American Saint album blew me away, and the followup is really good, too.

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