Seventeen million times, huh? I'm writing the end of the new Sam Cabot book, SKIN OF THE WOLF, and so help me, it's a giant action scene with a bonfire and fifteen characters all running around trying to get in each other's ways. Five are inside the property and the rest have to climb the fence in three different groups and none of them knows the others are there -- well, okay, everyone knows the five by the bonfire are there -- and four are cops, three are Noantri by which I mean vampires, two are priests, three are Shapeshifters, four are Native American, one wishes he were, one's a bodyguard, and one is blind. If that adds up to more than fifteen it's because some of these people are more than one of these things. In BLOOD OF THE LAMB my problem was getting all the characters to the same place for the big scene at the end. In this book that wasn't an issue; they all headed enthusiastically over. I wish some of them had decided to stay home.