FINI!

I can't believe it. After years of false starts. After months of hard work since deciding to complete the project, my horror novel BEAUTIFUL BOY is done.

Just a little bit of polishing and I can send it on to my literary agent.

It stands in at 106,000 words just now. That's 6,000 words longer than my previous novel THE LIVING END. And it will probably increase a couple thousand words or so by the time I'm finished editing it for inconsistencies and to add a bit of background.

I thought it appropriate that I publish this artwork by Bernie Wrightson, one of the greatest comic artists of the 1970s. This illustration is, as far as I'm concerned, the best werewolf pictorial of all time. He captured the feel and horror of the monster like no one else. I think it subconsciously stayed with me all through the writing of BEAUTIFUL BOY.

The werewolf from SWAMP THING #4. Art by the incomparable Bernie Wrightson. Copyright (alas!) by DC Comics. (I challenge anyone to show me a more beautifully and fully realized delineation of a werewolf.)

Now it's time to start working on the next novel. For the first time since THE FLOCK, I won't be writing a straight-up horror novel. And since I haven't sold anything since THE FLOCK, maybe this is a good thing. The plot's already roughed-in. I even have about 17K words written that will feature prominently in the book. No rest for the wicked writer...