Some people hate to say goodbye, so they either drag it on forever or ghost. Some people love to say goodbye, and can make the departure as fun as the arrival. Most people, however, fall somewhere in between. Currently I am stuck in that funk with my latest novel.

I am ready to say goodbye to The Deadly Rhymes Trilogy with Deadliest Rhymes, but I don’t know if it is the right decision. I set a goal to have a draft available by the third week of August to my core group of first readers I chose not because they shower me with praise, but because they give me honest feedback I can actually use. The praise doesn’t hurt, however. Anyway, the third week of August is fast approaching, and my ending, though it is all in my brain, swimming with my demons, and waiting to be lifted onto my novel’s pages. Now, all I have to do is get those words out... 

Easier said than done.

And so begins the long goodbye. Most of the characters will live on (assuming they survive because, quite honestly, I kill my characters with a click of a keystroke and never give it a second thought once they’re dead) in other, lighter stories and at least one dark comedy. Perhaps I have issues with saying goodbye after all. Perhaps it is just a way to completely complicate matters so I literally have to challenge myself to maintain the connected universe timeline of Ravenwood, Washington. In reality, it is probably both.

Five to eight-thousand words are all that separate me from my preliminary final draft (more on my editing process to come in the following weeks.) In my world, that is five to eight more days of writing. Five to eight more days. Then I have to say goodbye until November or December and implement the changes that need to be made after I’ve forgotten everything because college took up too much room in my brain.