It’s 1:30 in the morning, and I’ve just completed the first draft of my next novel, which used to be called “Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town,” and now has a different, provisional title that I’m not so sure about. It is 125,000 words long — longer than Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom and Eastern Standard Tribe combined. I started work on it in late December 2001 and finished it tonight. I’m exhausted and elated — at one point, I actually fell asleep typing and woke up to discover that I’d kept on typing nonsense words from my dreams. Freaky. Here’s an excerpt from an earlier draft: