First: I haven’t been posting as much as usual of late and I do apologize for that.

The reason is pretty simple: I’ve been laser focused on Draft #4 of Book #8 in the Corrosive Knights series…

Today -just a couple of hours ago, in fact!- I finished putting the last of the corrections into the novel’s Word file and will print the whole think out this evening and very shortly start up Draft #5.

Draft #4, as I look back on it now, was a watershed revision. What I mean by that is that this Draft felt like a very in depth, top-to-bottom revision which caught most of the important elements I needed to address in the book and fixed them. Hopefully, in completing this Draft, and until I get my fingers more into Draft #5, I feel like I’m very close to the point where I can focus entirely on how the story is told versus what I’m telling, and whether all the creative elements are in their proper place.

Looking back a little further, I regret my decision to do Draft #3 completely on the computer rather than as I usually do it, ie printing it out, reading the print out, and adding the voluminous corrections by pen on the pages themselves before going to the computer and putting those corrections in.

Which is, of course, what I did with Draft #4.

Mind you, I’m not saying the way I did Draft #3 was a total waste of time -it most certainly was not!- but given how early in the drafting process I was, I mistakenly felt I had advanced much further than I was. Therefore the corrections made for Draft #3, while they certainly moved the proverbial ball forward, in retrospect feel like they were pretty minor compared to the near total overhaul I did with Draft #4.

What pleases me the most now that I’ve finished Draft #4 is that the story elements are by and large where I think they need to be. There might still be some additions I’ll make -there often are!- but truthfully it feels like this book is very close to being done.

I’ve mentioned it before and I’ll repeat it again: For the last few novels and for whatever reason it has taken me 12 Drafts -not 11 and not 13- to get my novels to where I’m comfortable releasing them.

Not so with this book.

I believe when I’m done with Draft #5 I’ll be very close to the end. I will very likely need to do a Draft #6 but, after that, I can see myself finishing this off with either the 7th or 8th Draft.

This time around I either got really lucky and hit upon the plot quickly or I’m growing as a writer and don’t need to spend as much time in the earlier stages getting the book’s plot settled.

Regardless, I still feel like this is a book I can finish by the end of Summer or, unless some other problems arise, early in Fall.

I’m incredibly proud of this book and think it’s a wonderful addition to the Corrosive Knights series. I know Book #7, Legacy of the Argus, was presented as a conclusion to the major Corrosive Knights series and it remains so… but this new book, while not necessarily opening a whole new story line in this universe, adds an intriguing new piece.

I can’t wait to release it!