p.s., I'm a few hundred words short of the 25,000-word mark on the novel. NaNoWriMo, the organization which indirectly inspired me to just start writing the thing and let it come out one word at a time, asks its participants to complete a novel of at least 50,000 words within the space of thirty days, during the month of November; and even though my time constraints were such that 50k in a month just wasn't going to happen, at least at first, using that number as my goalpost has been extraordinarily helpful. And now, in just a few hundred words, I will have reached the halfway mark on the way to something that for the longest time seemed unattainable to me. A whole freaking book! Like the thought of having a daughter, the idea of me producing a novel still feels so unreal, and yet there it is, four and a half chapters of it, just as I come home from the library or teaching at night and there she is, my little Andrianaki.

Of course, from the looks of where the story is now, fifty thousand words might only get me halfway to the ultimate goal - the end of the book. But 50k is a milestone nonetheless. As is half of that. I'm on my way...