...My normally spotless room looks like it suffered a direct hit from an RPG.

...The spiders with whom I am forever making war (my bedroom is in the basement) have recaptured the entire southern sector of my bedroom.

...I have eaten more cereal, raisins, and cheese in the month of December than in the rest of my life combined.

...I haven't posted on Apricot Pie for two months.

...Both of my blogs have been woefully neglected.

...My run-amuck yorkie terrier has eaten two of my dad's leather gloves in the last week.

...If someone hadn't planted a tree in the living room I probably wouldn't have noticed Christmas.

But all of that is okay, because Draft 1 of my first novel, Son of The Shield is DONE!!!!

Back at the beginning of this year, I set a goal to finish Draft 1 by 12-31-09.  But then my grandmother was diagnosed with stage 4 lymphoma which threw my family into total chaos, and I basically came to the conclusion that I had to give that goal up.  I reset it for February 2010, since that would be the three-year anniversary of when I first had the idea for Son of The Shield.  My grandmother ended up successfully coming through chemotherapy and was declared 'cancer free' in September.  She and my grandfather still needed 24-hour care, however, which put my mom being the 'round-the-clock nurse and me being the cook/laundress/school teacher.  Needless to say, that doesn't allow a lot of time for writing.  In mid-October, my aunt took my grandparents to Colorado to spend the winter with her.  I thought about trying to make my goal, but my siblings were behind in school and my mom was totally exhausted from a summer of waiting rooms and doctors' offices, plus with the holidays coming up I just decided that it was best to keep the goal date set at February.

Then, for some unknown and as yet unexplained reason, on December 1 I was struck with a rash and wild conviction that, do or die, come fire or famine, I was GOING to finish Draft 1 by 12-31.  I informed my mother of my decision and then proceeded to kill myself.  My own computer died (a tragedy that very nearly shook the world) so I started driving the half mile to my grandparents' empty house every day to write using their computer.  I have lived the life of a hermit, keeping detailed track of each day's word count, hastily glossing over trouble spots (that's what Draft 2 is for) and lying awake at night planning what I would write the next day.  

And now, ladies and gentleman, I am pleased to announce that as of 7:25pm CST, December 30, 2009, Son of The Shield is a complete novel, simply in [desperate] need of editing.  It's time to celebrate!  

If you want to learn more about Son of The Shield, you can visit my blog at enterthewriterslair.blogsot.com  I'll be posting all kinds of information on it over the next couple of days.  For those of you who are following my story The Shadow Fields, I would like to apologize for my negligence.  But I'm back in the game now, and the next installment will be out ASAP!

(A big thank you to anyone who reads this post - I'm sure I'm incoherent, but I'm just a little excited, so please bear with me!)