This is a photograph of my desk, taken just moments ago:

What you see on the photo’s left side is my printer printing out the completed 9th draft of my latest Corrosive Knights novel, which will have this cover (the title will be kept secret just a little longer):

…and which I offered the following promotion for:

I began this latest draft of the book just a little over two months ago, on 5/12/16 and it really hurts to see it took me this long to get through this draft, especially since it took me about a month to do draft #8.

Why the considerably longer time?

Two factors:  First, because of this particular time of the year, ie summer, I’ve been traveling about.  Sadly, my travels do not involve any actual vacationing.  Instead, I’ve been helping my youngest daughter as she’s started up college and had to move in for her summer courses (it was recommended all freshmen take at least one summer course so they can acclimate themselves to this new setting).  Shortly, I’ll be moving her out as well as helping my other daughter move to her new apartment (thank goodness it is in the same building) and she starts her new year in college.

Maybe we’ll get some actual, honest to goodness vacation time.

We’ll see.

The second reason it took so long to do this draft is that while the first half of the book was pretty much good to go and required little more than grammatical/spelling corrections, the second half of the book required much more.

I was forced to get down and dirty and sift through almost every single damn line to get that second half of the book “right”.  On the plus side, the end result should make this second half of the book almost print ready.  It has to, given all the work involved!

But there’s little need to bore you with this, the bottom line is that I’m that much closer to being….DONE!!!!  FINISHED!!!!

Hurrah!!!

But before getting too excited, I’ll finish printing out this completed draft and, yes, once again revise it.  At that point I’ll have an even better idea of how far off we are from publishing this thing.

Regardless, we’re closer to the end.  We should be there quicker than you think.

I’m working hard at the latest draft of book #6 of the Corrosive Knights series and feel that once I get through it, what follows should be just grammatical/spelling issues and then the book’s release.  Hopefully sooner rather than later but, as I said before, this summer is jam packed with things that are competing with my time.

In the meanwhile, let me whet your appetite with a little teaser of this upcoming book:

Soon, baby…soon.

The image above consists of two folders.  The lower, thicker folder is filled with all 8 drafts of Corrosive Knights Book #6, whose cover (but not title, not yet anyway!) will look like this:

My update today is this: I’m done with draft #8, which I started on April 7, so it took me just a little over one month to read that latest draft, make revisions by pen, then transfer said revisions to the computer.

Once done this morning, I printed out the new draft, #9, and intend to start reading/revising it by either later today or tomorrow.  Draft #9 is within that smaller blue folder on top of the thicker one filled with older drafts.

So, where does book #6 stand as of today?  There’s good news to relate along with a bit of bad news.

First the good: I think I’ve nailed the book’s plot down completely.  As of this draft the book runs a very healthy 102,817 words long though it is possible/likely when I finish the revisions to come (I’ll get to that in a moment) that number will go downwards.

Again, the story is pretty much all there, which is an incredibly big step toward its completion.

Now the (somewhat) bad: I did add a bit of stuff to the book this previous go-around, especially towards the novel’s conclusion and this will need revision and its why I suspect the word count will drop.  I have a very bad habit of repeating things and have to catch myself and make sure I do this as little as possible.

The second somewhat bad thing is that I feel this novel will require two more full revisions and perhaps another couple of smaller, targeted revisions focused on those elements I added last.  If I don’t do them right, the book will fail.

So, it took me approximately one month to do this revision, a rather short period of time and I suspect subsequent revisions will take even less time, provided I’m not busy doing other things.  Unfortunately summer is just about upon us and at least two of the next three weekends will be swamped for me.

If I had to make a guess as to when the book will be done and considering my very bad previous predictions (I had hoped to finish the book in February, then May…I really should retire from the business of making predictions), it is conceivable the book will be ready around August.

But, again, this is pure guesswork on my part.

Regardless, book #6 in the Corrosive Knights series is moving along very well and I couldn’t be happier with the story told.  It will make for another great piece of the series and trust me when I say I’m incredibly eager to get it released.

Soon, my friends.

Soon.

Halfway through the revisions.  Should get this draft (#8) done by week’s end.

It’s been…something…these last few days/weeks.  Time I was hoping to use on writing was hijacked by life events and yet I’m feeling giddy.

Why?

Because I finished the 8th draft “read-through” of my latest Corrosive Knights books (#6 in the series) and while it was a struggle to find the time to work through it (as well as to re-re-re-read it), towards the end of the book I realized/came up with something significant which clears up one of the bigger problems I had with one of the characters in the book.  This realization not only makes perfect sense, it also makes the book significantly better than before.

And the really funny thing about this is that in retrospect this change is so damned obvious I can’t believe I didn’t think of it from the very beginning!  The change fits so naturally into the story I doubt anyone will realize it was quite literally a near last minute change/add-on!

That’s the funny thing about writing.  While I don’t subscribe to the notion of “characters writing themselves”, there are times I’m surprised when something like what I described above happens.  Perhaps this change/add-on lay in my subconscious all this time and took eight revisions for me to finally “see” it.  Or perhaps it was one of those lucky breaks you get, where the stars align and all works out for the best.

I know, I know, I’m being very vague about this change/add-on but this is deliberate as it involves one of the bigger reveals toward the very end of this novel.

Anyway, as of this morning, here we are:

Over my right shoulder and in that blue folder is the latest read-through of Corrosive Knights book #6.  I’m seconds away from starting the rewriting process and, once finished with this latest draft, will of course print the new draft (#9!) out and give it another revision.

We’re getting closer to the end but it is difficult for me to estimate when I’ll feel this book is “done”.  I’ll have a much better idea when this draft is finished, printed out, and re-read but as of this moment I suspect I’m at least two drafts away from finishing up (I know, I’ve said this before but, as I said above, it is difficult to estimate these things).

Regardless, I remain excited.  The book is progressing and with each draft I’m getting closer and closer to the end.

Let’s hope it comes very soon because I’m dying to get to the next novel.

And there you go…

Unless I change my mind (a possibility, as is the possibility I do a few minor changes to it between now and the book’s release), this is going to be the cover to Book #6 in the Corrosive Knights series.

As you -hopefully!- can tell, I’m keeping the book’s title a mystery a little longer.  The rectangular color-vomit at the bottom of the page, I assure you, will not be present in the completed work.

For perspective, these are the book covers to this point:

Now, to finish that damn book! 😉

Yesterday I finished the 7th draft of my latest Corrosive Knights novel.

As you can tell by the multitude of updates regarding this book and appearing of late, I’m making good progress on the end stages of the novel.  As I may have mentioned before, the novel as it sits at this moment is almost complete.  I’d say a good 2/3rd to 3/4th of it is just a grammatical/spelling draft away from being done while the other 1/3 to 1/4th requires perhaps a couple more passes to clarify and compress information.

This novel, like all the ones that came before it, has been a great challenge to write.  To me, writing a novel is like creating an intricate jigsaw puzzle piece by piece and without the idea of what the ultimate “picture” will look like.  You create each piece page by page, paragraph by paragraph and word by word and often you’re feeling your way and linking scenes as you move along.

I’m expecting to finish the read-through of draft #8 in a week’s time -or thereabouts- and, depending on how much cleaning up is required, maybe another couple of weeks to do the corrections on the computer.

I’ll provide updates as they come!

As of yesterday, just a little over two weeks after printing it out, I read through draft #7 of Corrosive Knights Book 6.

By “read through” I mean read it from start to end while making considerable notations, corrections, and additions. This process, in the earlier draft stages, can and has taken me sometimes as long as a month or more to do.  Therefore finishing the read through in a little over two weeks (and one of those weeks had my daughter over for Spring Break) is very good news indeed.

What it means is the draft and the story I’m telling “read” quite well.

While there are certain things I still have to fix, I’m pleasantly surprised by how little re-writing is necessary.  I’d say a good 70% or so of the book is, plot and storytelling-wise, done, with the other 30% requiring some rewriting and revision.  Of course, there’s also those pesky grammatical issues to deal with as well.

The bottom line is that as of today I’m back on the computer correcting those errors and/or revisions that need be done.  My hope is to get through this process in the next week to two weeks (we’ll see…I’ll once again have my attention drawn away from writing and towards other non-writing affairs at the tail end of March and into the first week or so of April.  How quickly I finish the revisions on this draft of the book depends on how much time is going to be sucked from my schedule during these days).

Second bottom line: I feel this book will be finished after no more than two further drafts.  One to make sure all the changes/revisions to the story are proper and one final draft to sort out any lingering grammatical issues.

Will the book be ready by May?

I really hope so but, because of some of these outside/non-writing time killers, I can’t be totally certain.  I’ll most certainly give it my best!

More news when I have it…