No better way to start a new year than by celebrating a big milestone.

During the holidays I completed the new manuscript for Set In Stone, my YA fantasy novel.  It’s a third draft, but I took the story in a dramatically different direction and ended up rewriting probably 80% of the novel, so in many respects it’s a new 1st draft.  I am thrilled with the result.  I’ve finally nailed the real story this time.

It ended up longer than I wanted – big surprise – topping out at 156,000 words or 685 double-spaced pages.  So the first order of business is to run through it again to do some polishing and trimming.  The plan is to cut about 15%.  Once that process is complete, I’ll hand it over to some beta readers for feedback.

Then, in February, the excellent editor Joshua Essoe is scheduled to do a full edit on the manuscript for me.  After that process, it should be ready to go.