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.