Marathon Redux

I don’t actually know what redux means. I assume it means again — lemme check friendly old google. Aha. It doesn’t actually mean again, it means revisiting, so I don’t mean redux, but WTF. I like the sound of it.

I’m here at Squalor on the River, my home away from home, the place I come to when I’ve got masses of writing to do and too many distractions at home. Nobody wants a damned thing from me here, I can just work and sleep and cuddle with the dogs and shop and pig out and damn, life is good. In Vermont we’re expecting 9 inches of snow. Here we’ve got daffodils.

Okay, prepare to be awed. I want to finish the ICE book so we can move on to stage two of The Plan. I flew out of Burlington on Tuesday, arrived in Cincinnati, visited, and still managed to write about a thousand words. So far so good. Wednesday I wrote 3516 (in between shopping and Olive Garden). Thursday 3317. Friday 5492 (we didn’t go out that day). Saturday, when we went out to Steak N Shake, Hobby Lobby, Jo-Ann’s, Staples, Krogers, and DSW, I still managed to write 4468, half of those words after midnight, which is unheard of for me. Then I went to bed around three and stayed up reading the divine Sherry Thomas’s book, NOT QUITE A HUSBAND and god knows when I fell asleep.

Today I got up, ate bagels, watched a terrible movie with Damien Lewis (who’s darling) and wrote 4001. Bringing it to a grand total of … about 22,000. That’s almost a third of a book. And I have two more full days to go.

So no, I won’t finish this brilliant sucker, but I’ll come close enough that I can finish it be the end of the month and send it off, and with luck it’ll be in the hands of readers in no time at all. And then something else new and completely exciting, and then Kristina Douglas just signed for two new books, so hey. As Crusie would say, nothing but good times ahead.