Yesterday I read over 150 pages and then submitted my manuscript to Tuscany Press under the title of Season of Betrayal.  It’s 736 pages.  77 chapters, plus prologue and epilogue.  Two parts.

Speaking of which, I find part two much easier to read, which is good since it’s the longer of the two by 20+ chapters.  I’m not surprised; part two is when my favorite character finally takes center stage.  (The whole time I’m reading part one I’m impatiently tapping my foot and waiting for him to show up.)  I think part one will be quite adequate in holding the reader’s attention, but overall I think part two will be much more enthralling, solely by virtue of said certain character’s personality.  All the winning aspects of the story, the humor, the fellowship, the loyalty, the action, drama, and adventure, the plots and schemes, and the mystery are all turned on to full intensity in part two.  Part one and the way it’s presented is necessary for a proper introduction of part two, but that’s just the thing; part one practically only exists for part two.  In fact, the whole book only exists for this one character.  Heehee, yeah, I’m obsessed.

And that explains why I weep at victory.  I’ve made it.  Two years and I’ve finished my novel, my masterpiece.  (Hold that thought, I’ll come back to it.)  I set out to finish in time of my birthday, and I sort of did.  Then I set out to edit and rewrite this monster in less than two months and I did.  And I did major rewriting too!  Whole chapters removed and several put in their place.  Major plot twists were devised and characters were redefined and deepened.  Looking back, I was pretty amazing.  So for these last few months, as you can see, I’ve been living and breathing this story.  Every day it was a joy to learn something new about these characters.  They’ve been my friends for two years now.  Now I’ve finally ‘cut the umbilical’, typed in ‘The End’, and closed the story.  This morning I woke up and it hit me in the gut.  It was over.  And it really felt like it.  I felt like I had been dragged a million miles away from the world I had created and nurtured.  That part of my life seemed to have closed.  It felt like it had been like that for ages upon ages.  We were worlds apart.  Without willing it, I was thinking of my story in past tense.  It was firmly behind me and all I could do was look forward.  Yeah, it was a weird feeling and even now I’m a little depressed.  Life almost seems…empty.  Kind of pointless.  Every day I to have a goal so that at the end of the day I can say to myself: ‘Manda, have you done what you determined to do today?’  ‘Sure did!’  ‘Then it’s been a good day.’  Without something to force myself to do, I waste the day and it recedes into feeling lost and meaningless.  Anyway…

The only thing that comforts me is knowing that there’s more ahead.  I call this book my masterpiece, and it always will be special to me.  But I know this isn’t the top of my game.  I’ve got a lot more growing and refining to do.  Someday I’ll be even better than this.  (I know, right?  How is that even possible!)  Two years ago, there was no ‘Season of Betrayal’.  The characters I so cherish now didn’t even exist back then.  It’s just a weird thought that they once didn’t exist.  They’ve been so engrained into my daily life for years that thinking they once weren’t is boggling.  If I had known as I was pacing up and down in our camper on vacation that the characters and plot I was developing were going to become this, I would have been jumping up and down with anticipation.  And that’s one thing I love about writing.  It starts off as such a tiny and insignificant idea, and then it becomes the only thing you ever think about. Sure enough, a few months into the story, it was all I was thinking of, and I could tell this one was going to be different.  But I never even imagined how different.

Now apply that to this situation.  I don’t know it, but in a few months or so, I’ll come up with an idea and I’ll start casually working on it.  Then it’ll grow and I’ll fall in love all over again.  But it doesn’t exist yet.  And I don’t know it.  But it’s waiting, just around the bend.  To quote from one of my favorite songs from my favorite band, Red, ‘the best is yet to come…’