Almost Finished

It's at 85,168 words, exactly, not counting chapter headings or anything else that isn't story.  (I go to a lot of work to figure that out.  Excel helps).  It is the fourth novel in the Adept Series, titled Gods of Strife.  I started seriously writing it February 22nd.  That was 38 days ago.  And it is finished.  We'll they are never finished until they go into print.  Next comes proofreading by anyone I can con into doing it for free.  That usually includes my wife.  Then I'll send it to my publisher and they will send it to an editor.  Assuming they want to publish it.

I had two brief periods of writer's block.  One when I realized my villain wasn't interesting enough to be the main villain.  So I made them a minion the the main villain.  Then I had a couple of days when I just couldn't figure out  how to end the novel.  I kept writing stuff leading up to the ending but I couldn't decided where to have the climax.  I had said my villain was in Johannesburg, South Africa (why, I don't know).  But I've never been to Johannesburg.  I had no idea where a good place would be to stage a climax.  Not like Agent of Artifice where the climax was at the Space Needle in Seattle, and I could go there and research it.  I didn't want to spend the thousands of dollars and hours on an airplane visiting Johannesburg.

But as I was writing the preliminaries for the climax it hit me.  I won't give away the location but suffice it to say, it's generic enough that I could make it up and build the venue to my specifications.

So now the long, arduous proofreading process.  I've never written a book this quickly.  I'm hoping it is up to my usual standards of perfection.  Which is, as perfect as I can make it.