Well, well, climax is ours (2381 words)

And 3384 for the chapter, and Araceli has had her big wish, and that's the end of the penultimate chapter and I can hardly believe it.

No writing tomorrow -- there's a band review and I'm going with. And the next day is a Sunday and I want to make that nice for the nice fellow who is still working six day weeks. And Emma has asked me to make her "cheese dumplings" which are actually turnovers, and that's kind of time consuming. So I don't know when I'll write the last chapter. But in the next few days.

And then: back to the early chapters, where there are a few holes I left in the service of speed, and which I can fill just by applying myself (and interviewing the ambulance driver again).

And then: figure out how to batch convert it to text files with the tildes and accents intact, and it's available for beta readers by the end of the month. Probably earlier.

And then: I'm going to write "the woman who walked with death," for Twenty Epics and I hope they buy it.

And then: I'm going to do a little more marketing on Esperanza Highway. And then: start the Afterwar recovery.

And I should be looking harder for a job.

And putting the house in order.

And 1137 more words . . .

I started Chapter 26, the ending one. I'm jazzed. I had to stay up to get Emma -- she played at the last football game she'll ever play at, tonight. At least the last Santa Cruz High School one. I thought I'd write a little before I got her, but we're back, she's exhausted in bed, and I'm still up.

It kind of looks like macho is one of the things this book is looking at. But not the swaggering kind: the modest, fix everything and don't show your feelings kind. Candelario is macho. I think my guy ends up macho. But in a good way. It's late, or I might develop this idea further.