Chapters Twenty-Three through Thirty Tonight

I had wanted to complete the revisions on Hafan Deg (which you all know, who have been following it, means Safe Harbor in Welsh) by this evening. Tomorrow, a brand New Year, my manuscript should have been waiting only for all those lovely agents to come back to their offices next Monday (well, I intended to give them a few days to settle back in) all refreshed and renewed, like the year, and they would all be ready for the earnest queries I intended to send them.

But I'm not quite finished...

I believe there are four, possibly five, chapters to go, and they are the trickiest of the lot, being the culmination of the story, the final resolution of the various emotional strains and stresses my poor heroine had through the previous 400 pages.

I have to admit to shedding tears during these last chapters. Silly, when you consider it's 'only fiction', but those of you who write, those of you who, as serious readers, deeply identify with a book, will know the characters are alive and well inside the writers' mind. And, if they're not, then they have no place on the written page, for what would we find moving about them? So I've gotten a bit too excited at some of the romantic couplings, and I definitely shed those darned tears during the really sad bits.

New Year has always been a far more important time to me than Christmas, since my children left home. New Year is the promise of better things, new and exciting opportunities, and I usually shed tears watching the various cities around the world as they each, in turn, celebrate. The cities can be safe - well, as safe as any city these days - or they can be war-torn, or politically at odds, recovering from floods and riots, and all the horrible things we see on our news. Yet, at New Year, the people gather with that same incredible, almost child-like, anticipation, waiting for the chance to begin again. This time it will be different. This time it really will be better.

So, watching that, seeing that lovely optimism, that adds to my weepiness. No one can ever say I'm not sentimental. It's just that I don't show it much in public, but get it down into my writing instead.

Hold on for the last few chapters of Karen's story. Nearly there.

I hope you have a wonderful, safe, and rewarding New Year.

Have to go now, because I need another tissue.