About once a year, my front bathroom becomes FILLED WITH FLIES, due to a crack in the foundation of the house causing them to decide that my place is the perfect spot for the fly equivalent of summer vacation. It's flies gone wild in there, and that makes it insanely irritating to try to do anything other than run in, swat at bugs, and run out. There's a can of Raid Fly-Killer on the windowsill for just such occasions.

Right now, there's also an enterprising three-inch-long praying mantis. Which has decided, for reasons known only to itself, that the perfect place from which to snatch flies out of the air, is...

...the can of Raid Fly-Killer.

Yes, there is a predatory insect currently cleaning my bathroom, while sitting atop a cannister of toxic bug-killing chemicals. Sometimes, I really think that life is just a little bit too surreal to have ever been invented. It just had to happen on its own. (Pictures of my friendly insectivore house guest will be coming later.)

I am assured that the single best thing an author can do for raising awareness of their blog -- no matter how awesome or insightful or filled with chocolate as it may chance to be -- is to, well, post pictures of their cats. I'm somewhat dubious about this theory, but hey, I always have pictures of my cats to share. And that means?

Time for cat pictures.

( Cut because kindness says 'do not force others to look at your cats without actually agreeing to the activity.' Also because there are several graphics here.Collapse )

Here go:

Words: 6,980
Total words: 70,060
Reason for stopping: finished THE ENTIRE BOOK. YES, IT'S DONE.
Music: largely, musical soundtracks.
Lilly: conked out on my bed.

First draft stats:

Pages: 246
Chapters: twenty-eight
Started: July 21, 2005
Finished: August 11, 2008

I think this may be the longest shortest first draft I've ever written -- the book is less than half the length of Newsflesh, yet took over a year longer to finish. I blame this on the tragic fact that Lycanthropy and Other Personal Issues kept getting relegated to the literary status of 'other woman' -- the book I really loved, yet turned to only after I'd finished my obligations to more 'important' commitments. If I were Clady, I would have long since tracked me down and kicked me in the teeth, that's all I'm saying here.

The bulk of the work on this book was done in the past eight months.

I still intend to go back and flesh out some of the earlier sequences a bit more thoroughly now that I know what my overall pacing looks like; because of that, and a few continuity adjustments, I'm planning to declare a 'draft 1.5' and add to the text, before cutting ten percent with draft two. It makes sense if you're me (and is actually how I managed Newsflesh, which turned out to have two missing chapters). But it's done. It's finally done. And I think it's a better book for having taken the time, because I've learned so much in the past few years.

It's done. Tonight, I will sleep the sleep of the just and the joyous.

It's done.