The End is Near

I can see the end. It’s just over the top of that small rise in the road ahead. I’m at 93,000 words, 327 manuscript pages, 26 chapters. I’m not sure what shape the denouement will take, but I expect it to be very brief, in this draft at least. I’d say chapter 27 will be the last, and the book should come in at no more than 98,000 words in this draft. I’ll write The End by Friday morning, I hope.

I heard from the Russian translator of The Road to the Dark Tower this morning. He’s diligently turning my Arabic letters into Cyrillic characters. Ultra cool.

This past weekend was productive. I polished off four book reviews for Accent and wrote up the column I mention below. I wrote 8000 words of The Silent Desert and transcribed over an hour of video diary, as well as dumping another 4.5 hours of video onto my hard drive. I also revised and updated the guide to identifying Stephen King first editions for King’s official web site. Not bad.

In other publication news, Cemetery Dance invited me to participate in the relaunch of their web site by implementing a “lite” version of my News from the Dead Zone column online. The first installment is now up. The online version will be topical news focused and the print edition will then concentrate more on in-depth analysis and commentary.