It is done. The final draft of the Metrognomes manuscript comes in at 65,620 words, with 48 interior illustrations. I have scanned it for spelling and grammar, which caused me much laughter when reviewing the computer's hilarious suggestions. Some of the name changes it came up with were priceless. I'll have to post them on the site some time after the book comes out, just for fun. So ther it is, and I feel a thousand pounds lighter.

Well, you'll all be happy to know that after many a sleepless night, the final draft of Metrognomes is so close to finished it's unreal! All I feel an urge still to do is run one last spelling and grammar check. I've finally got the infamous "chapter 9" looking the way it should (I had to cut some fun "historical" details that were just jumbling things all up. It hurt, but served the greater good). I've even tackled the dedication issues I was having, and I'm happy with what I decided. There were some very hard moments in this last revision. I had to let a couple of really well-drawn illustrations go, because of irreconcilable continuity issues. There were another two that I almost lost, but I managed to save them by adding a couple words here and a couple sentences there, or just slightly rewording what I'd written. Then they fit. The two that got cut would have required me completely rewriting (by that I mean trimming it down from a really gripping scene to a ho-hum paragraph) or losing an entire essential scene. I decided not to compromise the pacing of the story. I've realized there is a lot of "alternate"and "deleted" material from all three of my books that would be great to get up on the Web site. So it's not a total loss. Speaking of the Web site, it's looking like I can make the transition from Tripod without losing my URL. I've been looking into some amazing possibilities for 2007! The new site will open up so many creative options that simply are not there right now. All right, enough blabbing (one big paragraph...again!). I'm off to run one last Spell Check.