Finished Blood of Gold.

The Vampire Evolution Trilogy is complete!

I finished Blood of Gold yesterday.

The first book, Death of an Immortal has been online for 8 months.  The second book, Rule of Vampire is done and I'm just waiting for my tech guy Aaron to recover from his travels and find time to help me do the last bit of formatting that will let me post it on Amazon and Smashwords.

At least the first draft of Blood of Gold is done -- which means it will happen.  I mean, I could post what I've already written, but I want to let it be edited and give myself time to make improvements.

But it is more or less done.

I like it.

Not to get all mystical, but it feels like this comes from somewhere else, like the story exists and all I'm doing is transcribing it.  Like it deserves to exist.  Like these characters are somehow real.

Meanwhile, I get such a sense of fulfillment and relief from finishing and liking what I've done, that I feel a euphoria.   I mean it doesn't come easy.   I get in the middle of these stories and think, "What the hell have you gotten into?"

But you know what?   I've been steady and diligent and expended a huge amount of time and energy on it and so it happened.

I'm very grateful that this creative urge came over me after so many years.  I mean, I don't regret having my retailer career, and there wasn't really any choice anyway.

But I seem to be making up for lost time.  A few more years of this, and I'll have a whole career worth of material created.

Taking 25 years off gave me a chance to think about what I wanted to accomplish, to work out the best work process, to look back and figure out what I did wrong and right the first time.

Being financially secure gives me the confidence to dive into this and not emerge for weeks and months at a time.  But there is something to show for it all at the end, and I'm very very glad that this happening.

It's total bonus.  I want to keep doing it.