I’m within a chapter of finishing The God’s Eye, the longest Rafe and Ned adventure yet. By the time this post is published on Love Bytes, I hope to have done it. So, how does it feel to write those two hard, unforgiving, pitiless words?

The End.

It’s done. Finished. Accomplished. Achieved. Completed.

Yes, there’s relief there. Satisfaction. Pride, even, in doing a job as well as I could, and in some very trying circumstances. That heady, sweet feeling of success after a year of hard toil. (I’m a slow writer and RL has been brutal. Don’t judge!)

A heady sense of freedom, too. I get my afternoons back. I can go out for the day with my other half, and not feel guilty that I’m missing an afternoon of work. I don’t feel constrained to spend hours hunched over the keyboard, pounding out words.

But I’m also tired. Wrung out. It’s been a long haul to get here.

Restraint. I’m feeling that too. I’m stopping myself from going over it all obsessively, reviewing this chapter or that scene. I am the worst tweaker in the universe. I can still find things I’d change, even when the damn book is published and I have the hard copies in my hand.

Lonely. I feel a little bit lonely. Writing isn’t performance art. There won’t be a huge round of applause. There isn’t anyone to witness what you’ve done (if you discount the two dogs snoring on the sofa in the corner of your office). No one to take your bow. Of course, the other half will congratulate me. We’ll probably break out the champagne for a celebratory tipple. But he’s not a writer. He doesn’t truly get it, for all his support and sympathy.

Fearful, anticipatory, hopeful, since–to turn in inceptum finis est on its head–in the ending is the beginning. When DSP are finished with it, it stops being just mine and out it goes into the world to belong to anyone who wants to read it. My child leaving the nursery, sent out to fly on its own. I’m already scared for the reaction it will get, still worrying that the book is rubbish, even after all the work I’ve done on it (why hello, imposter syndrome!).

Vulnerable, because so much of me is in that book. So, I’m all raw nerve endings about its reception, anticipating the elation over every good review and dreading the bruises inflicted by every bad or meh one.

And oh lord, I’m grieving.

I’ve lived with Rafe Lancaster and Ned Winter for over a year now. This will be their last adventure. I’m elated it’s been done, proud as punch that I can end this series on a high note, and yet I’m truly grieving. I will miss Rafe like fury. I’ll miss his sardonic, wry voice in my head as he used me to write his adventures for him. I’ll miss the way he hides his big heart in sarcasm and cynicism, how much his love for Ned has changed and softened him. Rafe’s no longer going to be a part of my life, and the hole he’s leaving behind is aching.

Saying goodbye is hard. Hard as diamond.

So yeah. The End. Hurrah.

About Anna

Anna was a communications specialist for many years, working in various UK government departments on everything from marketing employment schemes to organizing conferences for 10,000 civil servants to running an internal TV service. These days, though, she is writing full time. She lives with her husband in a quiet village tucked deep in the Nottinghamshire countryside. She’s supported there by the Deputy Editor, aka Molly the cockerpoo, who is assisted by the lovely Mavis, a Yorkie-Bichon cross with a bark several sizes larger than she is but no opinion whatsoever on the placement of semi-colons.

Website and Blog | Facebook | The Butler’s Pantry (Facebook Group) | Pinterest | Twitter | Sign up for Anna’s occasional newsletter