I didn’t fall off the face of the Earth over the last week and a bit, but it has certainly felt like it while I have been working hard on finishing my out of genre title. What was originally thought to be a 30,000-ish word story ended up weighing in at just over 43,000 words, almost 10,000 showing up in a little over four days, when I wasn’t expecting to have heavy writing sessions. This has turned it into a nice little novel, compared to the novella I thought it might have been.

It’s all done now, though. I managed to finish it within the deadline I had, which is the first time I’ve had a full book under the deadline of someone else (I’ve had short stories committed to deadlines in the past, but this is a first). Writing a full book to a deadline was an interesting experience and I was nearly caught out with the added editing time required for the longer work, especially as life likes to get in the way of being able to write and edit.

I would like to thank one person in particular -- Sofia Grey, who helped out with some pre-release reading. I originally wasn’t going to let anyone else read the title (mainly due to timelines, but also because of genre), and she ended up reading a title that was still stuck in the very beginning of an editing process and who knew very little about the content of the book before going into it (because I wasn’t telling anyone about it).

Even though I’m not in the position to be able to broadly publish the book at the moment (check again at the end of the year, when I’ll get to know if I can or not), I’m considering distributing a limited number of free copies to some people who have helped out from time to time. The other thing I might do with it is continue to add to it. There are some sections where supporting characters demand more exposure, and others where the main characters can be doing a lot more to flesh out their own nature. While pacing is okay with the book, there are sections where the pace of action can be slowed slightly and the ‘magic happens’ type of plot advances can be explained in detail.

I am pleased with the book, though. Once I had everything completed and tidied up I went back and gave the story one final read through (for last minute edits) before sending it off. Even though I was intimately familiar with the characters and plot, I found that I had an emotional response as the book unfolded. I can only hope that my lucky readers will get the same experience.

As to my normal genre works, I’m planning to take a few days break and start rolling back into them again soon. I’ve hit a good stretch of writing, generating a lot of words per writing session (and keeping almost all of them after edits). As to when my next in-genre book will be ready, I don’t quite know, but I am hoping to have something in the next few months. Based on my current writing mood, I think my next few works are probably going to be in the 40-50,000 word novel count, which means fewer but longer books.