Yes, penultimate.
It's one of my favorite 'big' words. It means "before the end," or "next to last." It's a wonderful word and I hate to see it abused such as it has been in years past by half-educated advertising copywriters who think penultimate is something greater than the greatest thing and tell you things like, "this is the penultimate Lexus, a driving experience like no other." When that happens, I find myself snorting at the television and saying I'll just wait for the next one because it will be even better. I've been an ad copywriter and I think I'd rather have slashed my wrists than misuse one of my favorite words like that.
I'm giving you this little lecture on the proper meaning of the word because I just posted the penultimate chapter of "Band Geek Diary" for your reading pleasure. John is going to finish his diary when he finishes the school year and I'm going to call the story finished at that point. I'll post the last chapter this weekend unless my muse decides to run off and join the circus. Unlike some other authors here, who will remain nameless, I don't have it in me to turn this into a ten-million-word series following every move my protagonist makes in life over the next thirty or forty years and recording all his rantings.
I plan to keep writing, though. In fact, I have several ideas for additional stories in the Band Parents Universe as well as a pile of half-written tales. When I was stuck and trying to jumpstart my muse, she sometimes had a different story to pour into my head before she'd let go of anything for BGD and, since I've been working on the story for five years and got stuck more than a few times, it's quite a pile. There is also the matter of my one incomplete and inactive story, All A-Twitter, which needs a couple of chapters to conclude it. I'm going to be a busy boy if my muse will just give me the rest of those stories she started.
Anyway, long story short, ;tldr and all that, I'll be posting the final, ultimate, chapter of Band Geek Diary on Sunday morning. Thanks for coming along for the ride. Some new stuff is on the way.