ANNOUNCEMENT!!!

Hello! As promised, I have an announcement to make today.

Here it is.

Get ready.

Go.

!!!!!Blaze is finished!!!!!

 

I finished it on June 11th at 10:50 pm.....well actually 11:07pm.

See, I finished it, turned off the flashlight, snuggled into bed- and then thought of something I left out. So on went the flashlight, on came the iPod to Pinterest for my Blade board, and I added several more paragraphs.  Then Pinned this baby to excite and drive batty all of my night owl friends.

At which point I turned everything off, snuggled back down...and stayed awake for hours thinking about it.

 I was and am absolutely thrilled.

 

I'm really not sure where I'm heading with this celebratory post. I thought about giving you snippets, but at the end of the story, its hard to find any good ones that don't scream spoiler.

I guess I'll just see what happens.

 

It was a bitter sweet ending for me. I ended up being more sad over certain things than I had originally anticipated. People I thought were going to die survived. People who were supposed to survive....

This is only the second ending I've written since I've been older and more serious about writing. My first one was with Out of Darkness, and I was really worried about how this ending would measure up (because Cannon's ending was priceless- in my opinion).
For days before I finished it I was stalling because I didn't know what to do. I mean, I knew who lived, who died, what appendages were missing, and where they all ended up, but I didn't know what scene to end with . Every day I would write a scene or two and think "Is this it? Is this where I should stop?" And it never seem to fit, so I would just keep writing away, slowly making my way through, scene by scene, wondering when the end was going to hit.

Then I went swimming. (this is relevant, I promise)

 

Minion 1 is the best brainstorming partner to ever hit planet earth. She can't write stories, but she can listen to one and say exactly what is wrong, or what needs to happen. She has great ideas. So I got her in the pool and interrupted our paraphrased version of Hawk Nelson's Letters To The President.

"When we were younger, we used to sit in our pool and TALK SMACK about boys, and professional sports"

 I told her a rough draft of what was happening and asked her where I should end it. At first she did her very typical vague "I don't know. Somewhere nice" answer. So I kept talking and explaining and all the sudden she looks over at me and says "Do a Lonesome Dove ending"
And it was perfect.
(Lonesome Dove is an old western with Robert Duvall in it. It probably has the saddest, yet inspiring ending known to man kind)

I loved the idea. I told her I would have it finished before 1 am. She laughed at me. We talked it over for all of thirty seconds then went back to being crazy water benders.
That night I was nonexistent to my family, just scribbling away madly. I didn't really get on a role until I went up to bed, then I had to sit with a flashlight and work on it.

But I finished it.

Before 1 am.

Haha Minion 1.

I've been working on typing it into the computer and it's about 3/4's done. I can type 73 words per minute, and I've gotten several hours worth of typing time lately, so it should be coming along in a day or two for all of you who asked to beta read.

Last night my mom drove the bus of camp kids to the swimming pool (11 year old boys are insane- just saying) and I sat on my ipod, with a tablet in my lap, typing it onto an email so I could load it onto my word document when I got home. My mom thought I was nuts. Maybe she's right. I don't know. It worked though. I got several more pages typed up during the trip.

Thank you for all the congratulations and for all the interest you guys have shown in the story by commenting on the posts about it. It's awesome to have someone besides my sister take interest in my stories.

But alas, I must go now. I have a chapter to do on customer service (bleh) and then I have to go clean the church, and tidy up the house because no one's been home to do much lately. After that though, I'll be typing away madly.