Counting Down to South Africa T minus 9

What I'm reading: The Witness by Sandra Brown

What I'm writing: "THE END!"

Yes, finally! I "finished" last night. This morning, I made the last-minute changes to the manuscript, which now has a name only slightly better than Book 6 -- Hidden Fire. I had to change a bunch of character names. Not good to have 3 major players with similar names, which I know, but somehow wasn't thinking when I named them. I got to a scene with all three of them in it, and it hit me smack in the face. However, by then, I 'knew' them by those names, so I finished the book before deciding what I'd call them.

It's not a polished manuscript, but my editor knows my writing and should be able to decide if it's worth accepting. If it's inside the ballpark, we'll take it from there.

Yesterday's plans took a detour when I called the tour company to find out where our final travel documents were. "On the FedEx truck." Since the delivery window was 8 AM to 7 PM, and they had to be signed for, I had to postpone all the 'out of the house' chores and errands.

The other glitch was their "minor" change in wording about needing malaria meds. While their first guidelines said simply to check with your physician, and according to all the websites, malaria isn't a problem in South Africa, we assumed we would be fine without it. However, the final instructions say they 'require' it. Deeper research indicates we might be better off with yellow fever shots, too, because our plane refuels in an airport that falls within the 'if you're going to this country, you need proof of immunization.' We're not supposed to be getting off the plane, but at this point, I suppose it's smarter to get the shots. Too bad none of this was clear from the beginning. At any rate, all the checking was one more slowdown.

Now I can work on more edits for When Danger Calls.

Off to do all the things I wanted to do yesterday -- including a little food shopping. Of course, today, it's raining.