White as Dracula as I approach the bottom

4416 for the day, which may or may not be a personal record, but is a mighty number all the same. It's midnight now, and I started writing at 10:30 AM, with an extended dinner break. I thought about trying an all-nighter, but the words have bled from me and it's bedtime. Tomorrow: oubliettes, broken vows, bad ideas, and the earth-shattering kaboom.

--30--

The first draft of Kingdoms of Dust is done. It's not even my roughest draft--the zero draft of Bone Palace took that honor--though it is full of [bracket notes] and the end is more a post modern deconstruction of a denouement. But it's done.

I even cried a little.

On the next pass I'll make it all make sense.