That’s it

          Typed “end” on my novel, Deathsman, this week at 104,520 words and 337 manuscript pages after fifteen months of often-difficult labor.  I feel bittersweet, as usual.  Naomi will criticize it unmercifully now, scraping away adverbs and sweeping clever but superfluous phrases out the door and turning clunky sentences inside-out (or rather outside-in) and patching up grammar,  and I’ll flip a switch in my brain from “Create” to “Polish” and put it through a thorough sprucing-up before sending it off to an agent I met at the Killer Nashville conference last year.  I think the story is pretty damned good, myself.  We’ll see who agrees.

          I’ve managed to cull out about 150 volumes from my home library.  Sold a few yesterday at a flea market along with some household stuff.  Now I’ll have a stamp made at Staples that says, “This book was donated by author Phil Bowie.  Phil’s books are available in print and Kindle on Amazon.com.”  Then I’ll stamp the fly-leafs of all the remaining books and donate them to my local library, where they’ll continue giving pleasure to other addicted readers and perhaps serve as small ads for my own work.

          Rainy day today, so I’ll gather obsolete and excess paperwork from my desk and file cabinets and take a trip to the recycle center.

          All this is probably part of the novel completion process.

          I may even go through my closets.

Phil