Ssshhhh...

I've been dinking around with the manuscript long enough. I'm in the process of printing copies for the beta readers, and the printer was apparently having performance anxiety because it kept trying to shoot the pages onto the floor. I finally got the little extender piece figured out, though, and it seems to be cooperating now. It's going to be a tired little printer before it's all said and done. I have to say that buying a laser printer was a very smart thing to do. When I printed copies of "The Dragon's Lady" it was on a Desk Jet that could only manage 25 pages at a time without freaking out. If I told it to print the whole thing, it printed pages 1, 2, 3, and 10. Talk about a printer that needed babysitting. I'd lose my mind if I had the printer now--I have five manuscripts to print.

The story has shaken out thus far at just shy of 137,000 words. I've managed to finagle that into 268 very legible pages, but of course it will be more when it's formatted for the actual book. We'll see what happens when I get beta copies back.