The great thing about cliffhangers...

...is also the rotten thing about cliffhangers, at least, if you're the person responsible for resolving them.

Last week, I in effect promised readers of my LJ Idol story that I was going to come to the aid of a character who, left to his own devices (and being unconscious), would certainly come to a gruesome end without said aid.

Now, I've got to come up with something that does not involve a deus ex machina (although, to a certain extent, without adequate foreshadowing—and there certainly is a severe shortage of that commodity in my tale—that's always going to be an issue). Still, it's one thing to introduce a device that might make sense in a certain context (e.g., cylindrical bags of beans in a cellar) and quite another to lean heavily onto the deus part of the device, e.g., having an X-Wing fighter appear from the sky and strafe the stuffing out the bad guys.

I finally managed to send off the late assignment yesterday, and got two of seven late articles from the remaining late job out the door by mid-afternoon. A third is within a couple-three hours of completion, so it would appear—knock wood—that I stand a good chance of finishing the job before my stated "revised" submittal date.

I need to figure out what went wrong with these jobs. And then, I need to make sure it never happens again, because after more than 20 years of never missing a deadline, it really, really hurts to have missed two like this, as it turns my mind toward negative thoughts.

That said, tomorrow is going to be a great day!

Cheers...