Another quick update on the upcoming fifth novel in the Corrosive Knights series.

So far I’m feeling very good about this latest draft of this novel.  It has been a little less than a month since I concluded the previous draft (#4) and while that draft was a real back breaker, seeing as it involved considerable reworking of the later stages of the book, reading through this one has so far been a real joy.

When printed out, the fourth draft of this fifth novel (still with me!?)  runs 194 pages at single spaced 10 point Cambria.  The word count is 107,569.

Right now I’m at page 131 and thus far almost all the corrections I’ve made to this, the fifth draft, involve grammatical issues such as paring down sentences to eliminating repetitious phrases or clarifying explanations and punching up scenes that may require this.  As I’ve noted before, when I get to the point where my main corrections in a novel’s draft involve grammar and the issues outlined above rather than extensively rewriting or rethinking sequences, then I know the book is really close to being done.

The thing that has most amazed and delighted me with this draft (and you must pardon me for tooting my own horn) is how fun the thing is.  In reading this draft I’ve started to look at the book as being close to a finished product and am trying to put myself in the shoes of my readers.  That being the case, I’m having a blast.  The book is filled with both mysteries and surprises, and it should be quite the page turner.

This book is also the conclusion to the first major chapter in the Corrosive Knights series, though it is far from a conclusion to the entire story line.  I’m finally giving readers a link between all the novels in this series and the bigger story I’ve been working on telling all these years (the first three novels of the series were written as “stand alone” stories, so they can be read in any order and enjoyed without reading the others).

So, for now, that’s my update.

Let me not spend a minute more online and get back to work!