50,190

Very much to my surprise...but not to my characters'.  What put it over the top was making the explanation of what's going on and the epilogue make sense...which probably means I over-explained everything.  But since this IS officially a first draft, I can do that.

What's interesting is how doing this book has sharpened my awareness of what the scripts were about.  I think I was being coy in them and, should anything happen with this, I can now make them ten times better.  Makes me look at my other works in a different way, too.  Who knows what the characters will bring to stories like "Darian's Point" and "Mine to Kill" and "Dair's Window"?

In fact...I can already see how I can make the relationship between Thomas and Marion work better, simply by being able to show it and delve into it, especially during their courtship and marriage and such.  I refer to it in the script but now I'm thinking it's a much better idea to do it as a book.

As for publishing...I can do that myself online with Amazon...and even Barnes & Noble, I think.  I'll dig into that after the first of the year.

So...Daniel's happy with me, as are Van and Ace.  And Brendan's sitting on the sidelines wondering how long I want to break for before we get back to POS.  I'm not doing anything else until I have a first draft of his story done, period.  I don't need to worry about perfection in it, not just yet; I need to get the plot down and figure out what information I need from that.

Now excuse me while I go find some way of unfrying my brain.