I could go full “April Fool’s Day” and joke about my latest novel, #6 in the Corrosive Knights series, being all ready to go…but I won’t.

I will say this: I’m at roughly 3/4ths of the way through the “corrections” stage of the latest draft and am furiously working on some of the bigger story reveals which occur in this part of the book.

With a book that is suspenseful (albeit in a sci-fi setting) one of the things one has to work the hardest on is making these big reveals not only sensible in the context of the book but also -if you’ve done your job right!- they should be like a mind-bending body blow to the readers.

Two days ago I tackled the novel’s first really big reveal and felt I did a damn good job cleaning it up.  In that case, I wrote two such reveals in previous drafts and merged them into one this time around.  This happens more than I’d like when I write my novels.  I may write a certain revelatory scene and then, later in the book, realize it may make more sense at that point and, sometimes even without realizing it, I may write the reveal/scene again but make it work in the new context/placement.  I usually catch these repeated passages when I’m deep into the rewriting/polishing stages of the book.

Yesterday I hit another point in the novel wherein I realized I needed to add some logical explanation to something and, just like that, a new surprise/reveal came to me.  Whenever this happens, I can’t help but shake my head and smile.  It’s like this new “revelation” should have been there all along but, as it happens, I didn’t even consider it until the later stages of cleaning the novel up.

Still, better late than never!

Now for the (somewhat) bad news: I was really, really hoping that by today I’d be done with the latest revisions and moving on to printing this revised draft and going into the next reading/revising stage.  Obviously I’m not there yet and a combination of factors “helped” in this delay.

I don’t want to dwell on excuses but the reality is life has a frustrating habit of throwing curve balls and sometimes you just don’t have the time you wish to work.  Beyond that and as should be obvious by what I’ve written above, I’m in an especially delicate point of the book that requires a great deal of focus and thought.  When I’m at the “reveal” stages which are especially crucial in a novel, I tend to ssssllllloooooowwww down to make certain everything “works”.

It is my fervent hope that by next week I’ll finish this current draft and start up the next one.  Will it be the last?  While I hope so I think I’ll still need one more beyond that next one.  This upcoming draft will likely be focused on making sure any lingering story issues are resolved and the next one will make sure all grammatical/spelling issues are fixed.

Will the book be available by May?  Again, I really hope so.  I’m getting to that point I always reach with my novels where I want to “get it over with” and move on to a new book.

Regardless, even if I can’t quite get this novel out by May, it will be damned close to being ready and released.  If I can’t have it completed by May, then it will probably/likely be June.  It certainly will not be released much later than that!

Keep your fingers crossed!