February 19th – 157,408.

Marion had a friend round to today, which gifted me a glorious couple of hours to work without interruption this morning. Since I felt in full flow, it became easier and easier to work on through the morning and a momenta ago, I drew breath and cross-checked the word count.

Wow!

Three thousand two hundred and twenty four words written and it’s not yet noon. This piece is shaping up nice and I threw a couple of serious heavy moments at my heroine, so all is good in my world, although not so good in hers.

Don’t worry it’ll have a happy ending – eventually.

That’s taken me to 157,408 words so far this year, almost 7 and ½ days ahead of schedule and by tomorrow closing in on the total word count needed by the end of the month.

This now leaves me free to get a couple of other things done. I’ve got some covers to finish the artwork on for a couple of our authors, I received the approvals on the final artwork over the last couple of days. I’ve also managed, at last, to find a contemporary road map of 1930’s upstate New York – which I need for one of my projects. It’s at an immense scale, so much so, in fact, I can’t view it at 100% magnification in Photoshop without Photoshop throwing a wobbly at me. I calculated that at full size I’d need a two hundred inch screen to see the whole thing. Apart from the fact they don’t make one that big, or at least not at a price even remotely close to affordable – I’d have nowhere to put it. I guess I’m going to have to cut it into sections. Now at least, that project can move forward again.

Now at least I can get my couple moving from Quebec down to Albany and then across to Buffalo in their little Model ‘A’ Pickup and have then stop at all the right places. It’s a road story, and in this case there’s a good reason for accuracy. Don’t you just love prohibition! (And, no, they’re not bootleggers – so there!