The final sentence...

has been written.

I wrote it a while back, but haven't posted much lately about the novel (been busy yapping about podcasting). It took me a while to find a good ending scene. I was reading Terry Brooks's Sometimes the Magic Works and in it he wrote:

Don't settle for a beginning that doesn't feel strong and compelling or an ending that doesn't completely satisfy. Make your story arc the rainbow it deserves to be.

Frankly it took me two months longer to reach the end of my first draft because I wasn't satisfied with anything I was coming up with for the end of the book. Finally I thought back to one of the firt comments I got from my friend Scott. He asked me why the main character allows his companion, a young man he seems to be protecting, to be placed in constant danger. Finally it hit me. I found a way to explain why this happened throughout the story, enhanced a story arc that will appear in future novels... and got me an ending that made me happy.

Now I've got a hard copy with 300 pages of edits to go through... and 4 scenes to add. And oh yeah, I'm around 30,000 words over where I wanted to be.