Yesterday I finally finished the first draft of Starveyors. It feels like I’ve been writing this one forever, probably because I started it in January. I will now let it sit for a few weeks before hammering on the second draft. First drafts of my novels tend to be fluid and disorganized and the prose is sparse. I’m just getting the story down in the best, fastest way that I can. The manuscript becomes more interesting in the second draft, where I focus on scene order, continuity and the minutia of description and emotion.

The second draft is usually the one that my Beta readers get to read. After they rip it apart, I rebuild it and that becomes the final version that the editor sees. My editor usually doesn’t have to focus on form and structure, more on grammar and word choice. Once I get her changes made, it goes to the copy editor and he/she then finds the mistakes I entered while I was making the editorial changes. The process takes about three to four months until I get the manuscript into a releasable form.

So for my readers out there, what all that means is that you can expect to have Starveyors in your ebook readers this Christmas. I know that sounds like forever from now, but that’s the way it is.

Meanwhile, I’m starting to outline the next novel. Which is called The Rising and is set a year or two after Starforgers. This will be a smaller novel with only a handful of characters. Hopefully I can get it out sooner than this time next year.

P.S. For the writer geeks out there, here are the stats of the finished first draft.(64,227 words and 290 pages in Standard Manuscript Format.)