Finished the book.

I finished the book just now, here in the Ponderosa Lodge in Sisters.  It's 9:00.  It took me 23 days and anyone who stuck with me watched me do the whole thing.

Hey, I'm probably the only guy who has read the whole thing, and I like it.   I like that it holds together.  I like the characters and what happens to them. I'm actually kind of sad to be leaving them, but I don't think I'm up to a takeoff on LOTR's!

 I like it enough to put it online just the way it is.

I want to do some copy-editing over the next day or two.  Going to open a beer in a few minutes and try to read the whole thing today and tomorrow.  Out loud if possible.  Try to improve it in small ways.

Don't see any restructuring that needs to be done.  The story flow works. I want to keep the freshness of it, but also catch any mistakes.

I think I've learned to write a book quickly and from the heart and that's what I'll be doing from now on.  I enjoyed everything about it -- and I especially liked how it seemed to write itself.

I was hoping for around 50K words, and it ended up at 57, 382.  If I wanted to flesh it out to 60K as if that mattered, it would be easy enough.

What started out as a lark, ended up being a book.