This was a 1670-word night.

Then I went downstairs to empty the dishwasher before I went to bed, and pretty much figured out the Rest of the Book.

I already know the end sequence, more or less; what I didn’t know was everything that’s going to happen between now and then. But I got all those scenes lined up in my head, and then I came back upstairs and wrote another scene, and now am retiring from the field with 2,434 words for the night.

You know you’re nearing the end when this happens. Quotas go out the window, because you’re rolling downhill and won’t really stop until you reach the finish line. I could send Galen to talk to Henry Cavendish tonight, but it’s two a.m. and I’ve got my 120K milestone, which looks nice, and there’s no sense killing myself with marathon sessions — not yet, anyway.

Not until we get to the boom.

Word count: 120,151
LBR census: Blood and love have begun their headlong charge toward one another.
Authorial sadism: It’s a martyr-off! Like a bake-off, but with more people trying to get themselves killed.