Life has been its usual mix of chaos and stupidity over the last month – though I think the prize for stupidity this month probably goes to me for parking my car entirely too close to a thorn bush and having to get out that side…! – but solid progress has been made so, I’ll take it.

The plot hole problems mentioned last month are now largely resolved (I say largely because I have one scene I’m still fiddling with) and the final resolution to one of them (caused by fixing the original issue!) actually serves the overall series better so, that’s a win.

For those who like stats, the final word count for this draft is 115k, with another 15-20k of stuff I’ve already cut or otherwise not used. No wonder it’s taken a while…! And as a note, that cut stuff? Filed away just in case it turns out to be useful somewhere else. Admittedly, some of what I’ve cut is very specific to this book, but some of it very much isn’t, and 4k of it will actually go off and be its own book somewhere down the line, so…

The next step (once I finish messing with that scene, of course…) is to format things up, print out and start doing a spot of old fashioned editing with my trusty red biro – which doesn’t actually SEEM to leak, and yet, by the end of a session of editing my fingers look as if I’ve been taking part in one of the more brutal scenes in Game of Thrones!

I also need to get stuff over to my editor (hi J!) and then, once we’ve both taken a pass over it I’ll have more of an idea of where things sit.

In other news, Friday Fiction will be going up at the end of the week. As with last month, I’ve got a couple or so of short stories in varying states of doneness, so I’m not sure which one it will be.

Until then, happy reading 🙂