The. End.

 The. End.

So, The Luck Mechanics, book 1, is complete and I'm super excited. Yes, because I love finishing a book but because my life exploded, and for a little while there I couldn't write. My brain was too overloaded with other things--not to mention my life was too busy with consequences of those things.

I was so relieved that, after life settled down again, the writing was there, waiting for me to come back to it, and it hadn't been stopped forever. What I had wasn't writers block, really--I knew where the book was going and what I had to do to get there--it was terminal distraction. I had good reason to be distracted, and I wasn't going to beat myself up for it, but to find that it wasn't permanent...

I cannot contain my relief.

So for those who see a bit of a hole in my release schedule next year, you'll know why. For a moment, real life really did overwhelm me. And I can't promise this book won't need a shitton of paint, some screen doors and a bit of a makeover from the inside out to work.

But I'm proud of finishing--I'm SO proud of finishing. I've always prided myself on treating this like a profession and fulfilling the promises I make to my reader and my publisher, even when what I really want to do is knit and cry and watch NCIS (or whatever my hyper fixation at the time may be.)

I didn't do that. As soon as I could, I was back at the keyboard, even if I had to go gingerly because my arthritis had become a living breathing entity and not just a "some day when I get older" possibility.

I've been teaching a couple days a week for the past two weeks, and when I outlined ways for writers to help craft their stories I was reminded every time that I'd spent two and a half months writing a relatively short book and I wanted to cringe--and cry. But now I feel like I've lived up to those teachings, and that my professionalism has done me a service.

And I can sleep in, just a minute, before waking up to edit and submit.

And then I can start the next book (the Tech) because it's never "The End" when there's so much more to write.