Gibbous Moon Waning
Made it. My word processor says 50,384 words as of 9:15 tonight. When I dumped it into the validator routine at NaNoWriMo.org, though, it came out as 52,293. Evidently they're pretty generous about what they consider to be a "word." Anyway, it was enough to "win" the NaNo this year. It was not, by far, enough to complete the novel. That will be going on for some time yet.
I will have some excerpts for you tomorrow sometime, to more or less wrap up Francis' part of the story so you have some closure. The entire exposition of the complex plot will have to wait until I've rewritten and done a lot of editing, but I do intend to post it somewhere briefly for comments.
Thanks for all the encouragement, everyone. Hoof-claps to corelog too, for finishing NaNo on his first time out on his second time out. I didn't make quota until my second attempt either.
(Oh, and in the midst of getting 5200+ words written today, I managed to prepare dinner for guests, including turkey tetrazzini, home made focaccia, broccoli with hollandaise sauce, and home made lemon meringue pie. In return for being fed, they nicely hauled away a pickup load full of sheep poop that they wanted for their garden. So there is more to life than writing still.)
And tomorrow I don't have to think about NaNo for a while.