Did something very different yesterday before I got into the next chapter.
I wrote the final scene of Bandit’s Moon.
As I’ve been saying the past couple of weeks, I’ve known, pretty much from the beginning, how the book ends. Not so much the exact sequence that ends it, but the events that end it. And as I’ve gotten closer to that end, the outlines of the final sequence have become clearer.
Within the past few days, those outlines have filled in, and I began to actually see that final sequence in my mind. I think the final piece was the snow we had this week. I said early on that Bandit’s Moon was set in the week before Christmas – it begins on December 18th, and ends the morning of December 25th – Christmas morning (thus breaking my six days of Night and Day series time per book – this one actually runs almost, though not quite, seven days…call it 6 days, 20 hours, more or less). And what’s nicer than a White Christmas?
With the idea of snow on that final day, and the image of blood on snow, it all came together in my mind a couple of nights ago.
So I decided to write it.
It’s around 635 words in first-draft verbiage, a couple of manuscript pages. The last fifth or so of that final chapter (and right now I don’t know if that will be chapter 26 or chapter 27 – depends on how things play out in the next couple of days, how long it takes to get through what comes before those 635 words. In theory, it could be chapter 26, but I’m thinking right now that it will be chapter 27.)
I also know what will happen in the Epilogue, and could probably write that as well…but won’t, unless I find myself with some extra time. That could have gone a couple of different ways, and for a long time I was thinking of doing it one way. But in the past week, I’ve come up with a different event to stamp PAID on Bandit’s Moon.
So the destination is locked in. All I have to do is travel the road between here and there. Which I’ll continue doing today, after I get back from a trip to Costco, where I’ll stock up with the major food items I’ll need in February. Just in case I get snowed in again.
As Santa the Cable Guy says, “Get ‘er done!”