Well, I finished the very, very last rewrites to Masks & Shadows today, which made me very, very happy. I took out the ream of American 8.5"x11" paper I'd bought back in September and saved just for printing out novel manuscripts to be posted to the US. I started printing out the finished novel to mail out to Shawna tomorrow morning...

And the toner cartridge in the printer died. Kaput. It only managed 42 pages of the 452-page novel.

I am so unbelievably frustrated. We can't print it in a print shop, because those only print onto English paper sizes, and none of my friends in the neighborhood have high-quality printers for submissions. We've ordered a new toner cartridge, which should be delivered to us, with luck, by Friday.

So...no big deal, really. It'll just go out 3-4 days later than planned. But I'd been so excited about being finished with it, and sending it out...and it's already almost a month later than I'd originally hoped. So, foo. I am frustrated.

But I'm still really happy about having finished the re-write itself. And tomorrow is Patrick's birthday. Hurray! We'll celebrate with lunch at the fabulous Japanese restaurant near my job (since I'll be back at work tomorrow, thank goodness...I am finally, finally feeling nearly better). And I'm re-reading Elizabeth Peters's The Camelot Caper, which is a great, fun, tongue-in-cheek Gothic adventure (and even more fun to read now that I actually am an American in England, like so many of her heroines!).

So, lots of good stuff. But arggghhhh, nonetheless.