Last week Tuesday (you can read it here) I posted an entry noting that I was done with the 6th Draft of Book #8 in the Corrosive Knights series…

At that time, I was feeling wonderfully optimistic about how things were going with Book #8, and that further the fact that it took me a grand total of two weeks to go from reading/pen & ink revision to putting those revisions into the book’s Word file suggested I was winding down things pretty quickly.

Welp, it seems like that is indeed the case.

Last week Thursday, the 3rd, I started the process of reading/pen & ink revision of the book. I worked on it that day, Friday, skipped Saturday (a whole bunch of crap was going on and I simply didn’t have the time), worked on Sunday, and this morning I spent a little less than two hours to finish up that part of the revision process.

So, in sum, its taken me roughly 3 days and a few hours to read through the book and do those pen & ink revisions, which means starting either today but more likely tomorrow I’ll sit before the computer and begin to put those revisions into the Word file.

The process should be pretty quick. The first 50 some pages of the book (when printed out on 8 1/2 x 11 paper and at 10 point size, single spaced, it runs 197 pages long, so we’re talking the first 1/4th of the book) came out wonderfully well. I had very little to clean up on them.

As for the rest of the book, I’d say there are no more than 20 pages which require some deeper “cleaning up”. I found a couple of instances of the dreaded “I’m repeating myself” issue which almost always seems to pop up, but overall the book is incredibly close to being all ready.

I’m guessing putting the revisions in the Word file will take me no more than the remainder of this week, provided I have the time and won’t find myself forced to do other things.

So that means that, theoretically, by Friday the 11th of September I should be on my way to doing what will likely be the last revision of this book, Draft #8.

And it it takes me even less time than Draft #7 did, I should have the book completed before the end of the month.

Whoa.

When I was working on past books in the series, I noted that Book #8 was originally slated to be an “Epilogue” to the Corrosive Knights story and that, further, I had already written that Epilogue. I noted many times before that I still intend to use it, but that it is rather short (only some 20,000 words long versus my usual novels which go 85,000-110,000 words) and while trying to clean it up, I stumbled into this new story which is the one I’m presenting in Book #8.

When I was getting to the final pages of this draft, a curious realization came to me. I was effectively offering another, alternate Epilogue story to the Corrosive Knights series.

I suppose that was bound to happen, given Book #7, Legacy of the Argus, wraps up so many plot threads.

Yet it was a startling realization, especially given the fact that I’m so near the end of the book’s creation and its release.

I’ll also note, in concluding, that I remain totally blown away by this story. It’s really good, IMHO, and sits proudly among the other works.

The big question remains: When will the book be released?

I’m shooting for the end of September/very beginning of October at this point.

So, yes folks, this book will be available in not all that much more than 3-4 weeks or so time.

Soon, my friends. Very, very soon.