This is the life. Really.

I realized something today:

I'm living on a more or less tropical island.
I'm happily married.
I am working my dream job, which is writing.

I am totally living the life. I love it.

We're not rich, I'm not published, but I like where we are and what we have. I have wanted to write full-time as long as I can remember. I've hoped for an opportunity to take 6-12 months off from a normal job and just write...now I have 3 years. I really truly am living my dream right now. Even if I haven't "made it" yet, I'm doing what I've always wanted to do. (Eddie, you rock for making this possible)

The military life can really suck balls sometimes, but right now? Yeah, it rocks. I'm happy. I like this.

In other news, for any of you keeping tabs on the counters on the right side of this blog, you may have noticed that Fit for a King and The Hour of Our Death have both suddenly surged ahead in their percentages. Why? Because I realized that my estimated totals were not overly realistic. Both are looking to be much shorter than I'd planned (around 65K apiece), especially Fit for a King, which has gone from an estimate of 100,000 words to 65,000 words. Exciting, I know. However, what this means for me is that I'm a lot closer to being done with both of them than I originally thought.

Fit for a King is kind of taking on a life of its own: the characters have hijacked a few scenes and I'm trying to just run with it whenever it seems like it's working. In the end I'll probably have a totally jumbled first draft with lots of continuity errors, but that's what first drafts are for, so I'll deal. Whatever happens, it certainly doesn't bear a whole lot of resemblance to the original outline. Go figure: this is why my outlines aren't set in stone.

And now I'm going to go sit out on my patio and enjoy the fact that it's December, almost 10 pm, and I can stand outside in shorts and a T-shirt.