The last day!

Well, I didn't manage to get up early, but I got right to work once I did roll out of bed. I wrote 5,800 words today. New chapter title is "After the Golden Age". Today's scenes featured ass-kicking, name-taking, the deaths of several characters, a woolly scarf, a jar of Lethe water, restored sanity, sexual innuendo, and my wife writing the words "The End" at the bottom of the manuscript. Whoo!

And the first draft of Poison Sleep, the sequel to Blood Engines, is done. The total word count is 81,500, a tad on the short side. It will get longer in revision, though, since I need to write a couple of scenes to set up later events, and generally go through and touch up setting and sensory details (which I tend to skimp on in first drafts). It'll be closer to 85 or 90,000 words when it's finished, I imagine. I'm going to sit on it for a few weeks, then give it a read-through and fix as much as I can. Once I do that, I'll send it to first readers, and they'll tell me about all the problems I didn't notice. But the hard part is done. There's a draft on paper. I just finished my eighth novel! (The first four will likely never see the light of day, but damn it, I still count 'em.) And this is the first novel I've ever written on spec, which I found a rather terrifying prospect initially, but once I stopped constantly thinking about the fact that I'd already sold the book, I chilled out, and I think it turned out quite well.

And, yes, I'm already thinking about my next project. I might write a short erotic novel, just for kicks. And I'll probably do some short stories (including a collab I've been neglecting all week in my effort to finish this book).

I wrote over 38,000 words in five days. And boy are my arms tired.