Last time I posted I noted how quickly I was getting the revisions into the new novel (Draft #8) and was hoping by this week to be done.

Welp, not only did I put all those revisions into the book, but I went back and found a few pages in particular where I had some more lengthy revisions to do (there were some pages that required very minimal revisions and some were a little heavier), printed them out, and went over them in a quasi-9th draft and…

…I’m done.

Sure, I could go over the entire book one more time but at this point whatever changes are done will likely be incredibly minor and I’ve come to realize after so many years of writing that there does come a point where you gotta let the book go.

So as of today, Tuesday the 14th of June, the novel is effectively finished up and all I’m waiting for now is the commissioned cover to show up. If its good (I really hope it is!) and doesn’t require any major fine tuning, I can see this book becoming available perhaps next week digitally via Kindle and, hopefully, in the next couple of weeks as a paperback.

The book took a lot of effort to get done, perhaps more than most of my others because of the things I went through the past year, but I’m proud of the work and feel it fits beautifully with my other works.

Now to keep checking my emails to see when the cover comes in…!

Quick and thrilling update to offer:

I finished reading through my latest novel and adding all the red notes/revisions and yesterday was the first day of putting those revisions into the computer.

In one day’s time, I managed to revise a little over 1/3rd of the book!

Now, this was the earlier sections of the novel and I’m keenly aware there is at least one section near the midpoint where I felt it needed a little more work but that amounts to no more than a few pages and, at least in the section I just finished, there may be only 1 page I wish to give a quick other look before declaring those pages done.

This is my 8th draft of the novel so plenty of hard work has been done on it but it is such a pleasure to see things finally sorting themselves out and looking like we’re near the end.

I have already commissioned the cover so I’m looking forward to seeing that soon as well.

I strongly suspect by sometime next week this novel will be completed and then I’ll post it to Amazon’s Kindle for purchase. The actual paperback will take a little longer as I have to see the proof and approve of it (provided there are no glaring problems) but the reality is that this book will be available in all formats no later than the later parts of this month or very early parts of next month.

Hoorah!

So on 5/31 I finished putting in the revisions into my Word file to my latest novel and, as of today, June 5th, I’m reading through it and writing down notes/corrections in red ink. I’m not quite halfway through reading this latest draft (it will be #8) but at least so far I’m confident this will be the last revision needed and, further, I am confident I’ll have the book available, at least via Kindle, by later this very month.

Fingers crossed!

The book has taken quite a bit more out of me than some of the other books I’ve written and that’s in part to the tragedies I’ve faced this past year. It’s been an incredibly rough year and, at this moment, I’m very busy with other stuff so finding the time to finish this book up has been a little harder than usual.

But I will get it done, dammit!

Soon, dear readers, very soon…!

So last week Saturday I posted that I had finished reading through and putting down the red ink revisions for Draft #6 of my latest novel.

I wrote I felt the novel was nearly done and, as if to prove that fact, today and six days later I can announce that I’ve put all those red ink notes into the Word file and the book is ready to be printed out one more time and given a -perhaps last!- red ink-revision before putting those edits into the Word file.

If you’ve been around here you’ll know that as my novels get closer to be finished up, I tend to need less time to do these revisions. The earlier drafts require quite a bit of reworking and revisions and it is not unheard of that a draft can take me several months to finish up. The fact that I was able to put all these revisions into the Word file in less than a week speaks to how close I feel the book is to being finalized.

So perhaps tomorrow (its getting a little late today) I will print this puppy out and give it a read through.

If all goes well, my next announcement should confirm whether we’ve reached the last draft or not!

Fingers crossed!

It’s Saturday the 14th of May and its not quite lunch time and I’ve just finished the read-through and red ink revisions of Draft #6 of my latest novel…

…and I’m freaking ecstatic.

One of the very best feelings in the world for an author is reaching a point where you feel like your novel is just about done. With regard to this book, that’s exactly where I’m at at this point in time.

The revisions happened pretty quick considering I did spend one weekend flying out -and therefore was unable to do any work on the book- so in reality I’ve taken maybe a little over two weeks to go over this books and write my revisions down.

Even better is the fact that, in looking over the revisions, I suspect it won’t take me much more than a week to transfer those revisions into my Word file and print the whole thing out once again.

When I do that, I intend to give the book one more read through but I feel confident in saying this will be the final one.

So, if all goes well and I’m not delayed by anything, maybe another week or so to add those revisions to the Word file, maybe another couple of weeks at the most to read it one final time, then maybe less than a week or so to add whatever final revisions are necessary.

The book will be ready by June, there is no question about this.

Let’s see when exactly I’ll have it available for purchase!

Stay tuned, it won’t be long now!

Yesterday, April the 25th, I finished putting all my notes/revisions into the Word file of my new novel. It’s been almost a month since I finished putting in those inked revisions and now putting them into the actual pages and I have to say…

…I like where I’m at.

One of the most satisfying things about being a writer is when you see the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel, the point where you feel your book is really, really close to being done.

Yesterday, when I finished up putting those revisions into the Word file, and as I was going through those last pages, I was hit with a wave of pride at the work. I felt like I accomplished what I was hoping for and am really close to delivering the story I’ve tried so very hard to deliver.

So Draft #5 is done now and, unfortunately, I’ll have to wait a few days -busy with other stuff!- and let it sit during that time before getting back to it. I strongly suspect the book will need not much more than two more drafts and that Draft #6 will feature mostly edits toward the later pages and where a little more polishing needs to be made.

It’s impossible to give an estimation as to how much longer it will take to get all this done, but I suspect we’re looking at a Summer release of the novel at this point. Perhaps sometime in later June or July if -and that’s a BIG if- I can really get things going in the next few weeks.

We’ll see.

Yesterday, March the 27th, 2022, was a truly magical day, at least for me.

I didn’t realize until yesterday that, since last year and the passing of my parents in the collapse of Champlain Towers South on June 24th, that I’ve been in a sort of mental fog.

I suppose I knew this to some degree. Things that usually gave me joy didn’t. I was doing the things I needed to do to get through each day but I did so on a sort of autopilot rather than with any pleasure.

I worked on my new novel during this time, but it too was done in such a piecemeal fashion and without the mix of love and frustration (truly, writing a novel is usually a combination of extreme pleasure and frustration!) I normally have for my works. Not that what revisions I was doing were bad, mind you, only that the emotions behind it weren’t there like before.

And this went for pretty much most of the activities in my life this past nearly a year.

Unless there was no good relationship between offspring and parents, the loss of one’s parents is a traumatic event. And for me, for my family, the shocking way they died made the situation all the worse. From the collapse itself to waiting for their bodies to be found to dealing with all the lawyers and trying to settle their estate (not only did I lose them, but all the paperwork they had in their home) to running their businesses… its a lot to take one and find the time to properly grieve as well.

But yesterday, for whatever reason, I found myself a little after twelve noon feeling extremely exhausted and needing to take a nap. This is not totally unusual for me, there are days here and there where my body simply reaches the point I need to rest.

Only this time, when I lay down and took a deep thirty minute or so nap and woke up, I felt… different.

I felt incredibly refreshed and, for the first time in far too long, alive like I hadn’t been in too long.

Perhaps for me the extreme sadness which came from the trauma of the building’s collapse and their deaths has finally crested, though it certainly isn’t anywhere near gone. I still miss my parents tremendously, but it felt like after that nap I was energized and for the first time in a very long time I felt I was past that emotional fog.

I picked up my new novel, which printed out runs to 195 single spaced pages and of which I had the last 1/4th of the book, some 50 pages or so, left to revise and, in the course of yesterday afternoon, I did that revision.

I read through it and made my red ink notations and it was such a freaking joy to do so.

Time eventually heals all and while I don’t feel like I’m fully healed yet, at least as of yesterday and for the first time in too long a time I felt like I was a little bit back to my old self.

Let’s see if it lasts.

Just a very quick update: I’ve printed up the latest draft of the book, #5, and will get to it today at some point.

I do plan to read through it quickly and revise what needs revision but I’m hopeful -though at this point I’m only guessing- that I should be quite clear to the finish line now.

We’ll see.

Regardless, onwards!

Man, how time flies.

When I last made an update in early December of 2021, I was noting how I just read and wrote in the various revisions on paper for my latest novel and would be getting into putting them into the computer.

Well… that took much longer than I thought it would.

In part, I suppose, its because of the Christmas/New Year/Holiday dates… it becomes very difficult to find the time to carve out what with visiting relatives and having family over. Plus, I traveled with my daughter back to Austin and spent some time there with her which also sucked away a few days. Not to mention my other work and those myriad issues regarding taking care of my parents’ estate, the lawyers, etc. etc.

Truly it feels sometimes like I need a real break.

But today, I’m extremely happy to say, I got into a groove and essentially burned through the final parts of the revision, making it some ten pages from the very end of the novel and, upon realizing just how close I was, decided to do a ”clean sweep” and finish off this draft once and for all.

The big question is: Where am I now with regard to finishing this novel?

Pretty far, it feels.

Of course, until I give the book another read and pull out the dreaded red pen and make all those revisions, I won’t know exactly how close to finished I’ll be, but I feel like things are getting there. Perhaps the biggest single revision I did in this part of the draft was moving an entire section of the story to a little earlier in the novel -thank the heavens for Word Processors!- but otherwise it was a matter of cleaning stuff up and adding better descriptors and/or dialogue here and there.

So I move along, hopefully printing this novel out by tomorrow (I have neither the time nor desire to do so today… there’s still stuff to be done around the house!) and, if all goes well, by either this weekend or early next week its time to start reading!

Onward!