First draft complete!

Last night, after a very intense two months (almost exactly), I finished the story of my new book, Dawn of the Lightbearer! It was quite the whirlwind averaging 11,000 words a week and ending out at about 117,000 total. I’ve never had such a burst of creativity, and for the most part, this book just appeared on the page. It will be the first book in a series of probably 3-5, for although I know where the story will go, how it gets there may take longer than I planned. In any event, I’m super excited! There is nothing like the feeling of typing “the end.”

You may be asking, “When can I read it?” Soon, I promise. Currently, only the story is down, and if you know a bit about writing, you’ll realize I still have a ways to go before the book is ready for the world—probably a few months. As I said before, I hope to have it out by July 4th, but it may be sooner, depending on my time and what I find in my first read-through. Last night I started this step, which is my favorite. It is when a writer gets to take a tale and add the magic- those little details that make things pop! It is also so much less stressful than the actual writing. I also have a few chapters and such to add, but for the most part, Dawn of the Lightbearer is a solid novel.

For this book, I tried something new and just wrote without doing much re-reading. I’ve found that I used going over what I wrote as an excuse not to keep moving forward and dragged out the writing process considerably. Hence, I made a conscious effort to only re-read from the beginning of the previous chapter to get into the flow, and that’s it. It forced me to always move forward, but it also means I may have fallen off track here and there. But that’s what this read-through is for, and as the whole story is there, it shouldn’t be too hard to remedy any issues I find.

Then comes the cutting, editing, and polishing to bring it to a work worthy for the world and lastly the production of the synopsis and other details for the marketing.

On Saturday, I also worked on the planned cover (above). Let me know what you think and don’t be shy. It’s easier to change things now than later.

Cheers!