Finishing a novel is a serious event for me. It drains me, leaving me essentially empty of words no matter what other things there may be to write about. So I hope you’ll allow me another day off to recover. The agony of awaiting my beta-readers’ opinions is severe enough.
To quote the poet Robinson Jeffers:
“The world’s in a bad way, my man,
And bound to be worse before it mends;
Better lie up in the mountain here
Four or five centuries,
While the stars go over the lonely ocean,”
The old father of wild pigs,
Plowing the fallow on Mal Paso Mountain.
But it will continue to be in that “bad way” for a while longer without requiring my raving to help it along. Enjoy the contributions of Linda, Dave, the Colonel, and the rest for today. And contemplate a bit of wisdom provided me by an old friend, three decades ago:
So I smiled…and they got worse.