My Two Favorite Words

It’s just two words. The two words that are the sweetest in the English language to me and every other author I know. They usually come after weeks and months of toil and tens of thousands of words written at all hours of the day and night, often at the expense of other activities and under less than ideal conditions—sickness, family crises, work pressures (for those with day jobs)—and are the sum total of a massive creative output. They are the words “The End” typed on the last page of a manuscript. Speaking for myself, by the time I get the end of a work-in-progress after months of slogging through chapters and scenes, some either disjointed or suffering from what Stephen King calls “literary elephantiasis, those two little words can seem like a mirage. Did I really finish my book or am I hallucinating? 

This past weekend I typed the words “The End” after finishing the next-to-last draft of my novel in progress. It’s the first book in a planned series set in a fictional town in California’s Gold Country, titled “The Tattooed Ladies’ Club of Gold Creek.” The setting is near and dear to my heart. Growing up, I went camping at a lake in the region with my family for two weeks every summer. Some of my happiest memories of childhood are from those camping trips.

Swimming in the lake…sleeping in a tent with my sisters (though I don’t fondly remember having to get up in the middle of the night to make my way to the public toilets by flashlight)…roasting hot dogs and marshmallows on a stick over a campfire… attending movies at the outdoor amphitheater by the lake. If you were to watch our Goudge family home movies you would think we lived at Lake Pinecrest year-round and that it was always summer there.

My first kiss, when I was fourteen, was from a boy I met at Pinecrest. I’ve been back many times since. I’m a mountain girl at heart. My favorite scent in a scented candle is that of evergreens. When I do my daily meditation, I picture myself at the lake as a way to relax. So it was fun for me to explore the mountains of my fictional setting. Naturally, I threw romance and suspense elements into the pot to spice things up.

Now it’s time to start at the beginning again for what I hope will be the final draft. I hope to have it done by Christmas. Then it will be time to start Book 2 of the series. I’m ahead of the game, though. I have it partially written and sketched out already. Can you tell I’m very excited about my new series? I hope you, dear reader, will be too once you’ve sampled it. Stay tuned for further book news. I hope to have a pub date to announce soon. Meanwhile, I’m savoring those two little words typed on the page that’s open on my laptop screen. “The End.”