Coming Around the Turn and into the Home Stretch ...

The door-stop fantasy ms draws nigh unto its end.

Book One - The Chronicles of Eilandia: The Dreadnaught will, if I can manage to stay alive for another week or ten days, and the End Times holding off, will get at least to a complete first draft. Which, as writers know, is the hard part -- staving off the End Times and staying alive ...

The novel, which began as a back-burner project twixt me and Reaves back in November of 2003, and which we paid scant attention to, save for a burst at the beginning and the latest attack, will be the longest running in-progress work I've done. Nothing else I've had cooking has taken four years to get finishsed.

I usually have at least two projects going at once, but the average time for a novel in my word processor is four or five months. I've had a couple go longer. (The quickest was a novelization of a movie script, which took eighteen working days, though I allowed the editor to think it took six weeks, because that's how much time he gave me.)

Those of you who have volunteered as readers -- I have your names on file -- will get an email with the ms attached, all things going well, in the next two weeks or so.

(The picture? Twenty-five or so years old, "Perry Carrying Reaves," which I always consider appropriate in our collaborations ...)