“Stockbridge interlude,” chapter 19 of The Dragon Lady of Stockbridge is now available to read. Rebecca’s hunt for the villain Maverick has been interrupted by the dragon taking her to Stockbridge. What does the dragon want? Can Rebecca resolve the problems that face her in Stockbridge and get back to her home town before her absence imperils Abigail?

There has been an e-mail account associated with this blog for some time. (You hadn’t noticed? It’s mentioned on my About page.) I tend more toward logorrhea than pithy comments, so I was reluctant to add a Twitter account. But now I have one. (Addendum: well, no I don’t. I did have one, but Twitter messed it up, and I decided to delete it rather than go on arguing with them.)

I’ve been planning on the end of Dragon Lady for some time, rehearsing the plot in detail over and over again in my head. Wednesday night I put the finishing touches on chapter 19, and then just continued writing. And writing. And writing. I finally stopped at three in the morning. I had just written four chapters, and completed Dragon Lady. It still needs polishing, of course, but it’s not going to change substantially. So I can tell you all that the story will end with chapter 23, to be published on Friday, February 1, 2013.

Writing four chapters in one night has exhausted my creative energies for the moment. I’m sitting here in my study looking at the text of Dragon Lady in another window on my laptop, and realizing it’s not going to keep me up at night any more. There’s no more story to write. Rebecca and this story are done. I’m going to miss them. Maybe someday I’ll have someone make an actual physical copy of the walking stick. It would be a nice way to commemorate the story. Though I doubt I can afford to have the head made of solid sterling silver!

Meanwhile, you all still have five new chapters to read (including today’s). It’s going to be fun reading your reactions to these chapters, knowing what’s in them and that I don’t have to worry about finishing them. In the meantime, I leave you with a drawing of Rebecca’s beloved Berkshire hills.

Greylock, highest mountain in the Berkshires