"Strachan's Attic" is Finished. Now, where's that agent?

At 8:34 pm Eastern US Time, Saturday, July 11, I finished Strachan's Attic. I don't know why it had become such a big deal to me, closing that final chapter, but I was more than a little irritable at the prospect and kept stalling for more time. In fact, when I finally sat down to complete it, once and for all, it came very quickly. I grabbed a sandwich at noon, and I remembered to feed the cats at 5 pm, but I was driven, as they say, and way too high on success to have an appetite.

After I'd had my really good closing-line weep (think Joan Wilder at the beginning of Romancing the Stone, or are you too young?), I phoned or emailed everyone who'd shown the slightest interest (and was in the right time zone) - best friend, writing buddy, sons, sister, niece, Larry up the road, that enthusiastic supermarket checkout girl. (Well, this last is an exaggeration. The checkout girl wasn't really enthusiastic - just being polite.) I didn't eat until around 9:30 pm, when I made toast. You didn't really expect me to cook then, did you? (And, no, we don't even have pizza delivery - this is a very small town.)

I'm now reading it at 150% screen size for typos, obvious errors, but I was very thorough with my daily revisions, so it shouldn't be too bad. Finally, when I can face it, I'll run off a hard copy for that final proofing.

Hope that British agent wants Strachan as well, because I'm itching to get rolling with it, and I'll find someone else if there's too much delay. Who says we can't have two agents? I love this novel, and want to share it.

Of course, as with anything that you're over-excited with (including men), you tend to make silly errors, and my friend quickly emailed me to say that a character who was married to my 1940s protagonist, had suddenly re-emerged sixty years later in the final chapter, and was rubbing my modern-day protagonist's feet! (Of course, I might have just been testing my friend's proof-reading skills.) Anyway, while we're being so picky, how come no one noticed that another guy had one name in the first half of the book, and another in the second? Do I have to do everything myself?

Let me say it one more time: I've finished Strachan's Attic.