I have noted to my two primary reviewers that, in the recent weeks of my latest (and, for the time being, last) revision of AI, I’ve felt less and less compelled to make any changes the closer I get to the end of the book.

I wasn’t sure if that was due to my fatigue with the project or whether the book actually got better toward the end.

Well, today, I answered that question, because today I feel compelled to make some massive changes to the ending. Well, not massive changes in and of themselves; the characters will do the same things, the conflicts will resolve in the same ways. But there are some serious plot holes toward the end of the book which are too big not to address, and that’s going to require some creative narrative surgery to fix. It’s kinda like I was so excited to put the finishing touches on the thing that I didn’t realize I had attached the feet above the knees. Then the thing tried to walk and it collapsed like a wire skeleton. Or maybe the book is like a gymnast that spends 180 pages running and twisting and building up momentum and then breaks its ankle on the landing from a back handspring.

So even though it’s a little discouraging to run into such a hurdle within sight of the end of the process, I’m at least heartened to see that my editorial lenses aren’t simply fogged with exhaustion.

Now I’m off to think about how to straighten out this gimpy narrative leg…