Sulfur: completed.

Editing is now before me, sitting like an ugly troll between my novel and publication. I'm late on my usual Friday post because Friday was the day I typed the last chapter, the last line, the last bit of dialogue between characters that have become downright precious to me.

I am exhausted. After putting Khensa through so much emotional and physical pain I find myself sharing her aches. With the story's completion, all I wanted was to get away from my computer. I went out to dinner, I ran some errands. Yesterday, I went salmon fishing, and last night I slept for twelve hours.

I must admit to a dissatisfaction with the ending. There is so much emotion (personal gratitude, narrative closure, suitably epic descriptors) I wanted to express in the last six or so chapters, that I feel one week's frantic writing could not adequately do my feelings justice. It will be revisited, perhaps lengthened, and then maybe I'll have my release from my characters and their stories.

For the first time today, I piled Sulfur's chapters into one mega-file (I usually edit in chapter chunks). I wanted to see what it's total length had come out to be, afraid that in my hurry to express all that needed to be expressed, I had shortened what should have been a novel of Farro's length.

I'm pleased to report my findings:

Farro = 35 Chapters = about 116,000 words

Sulfur = 32 Chapters = about 125,000 words

Long chapters, longer book, and hopefully (when all is said and done) better written.

Thank you all for your support and your advice. Thanks in particular to my husband, my two alpha-readers, and my three beta-readers.

Now, you've probably already heard but here's Chapter five of Sulfur, for your enjoyment.

Keep writing and don't stop for anything,

Arreana