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Sunday, November 6, 2011

News from Dead Mule Swamp is DONE

News from Dead Mule Swamp is done! First draft of course, but I don't anticipate a major re-write will be needed.

I should have taken a picture of me handing the paper mss to one of my beta readers. You would have seen lots of smiles. The other two copies in circulation went out by email to a beta reader, and Patricia Rockwell, editor of Cozy Cat Mysteries.

It's an odd thing how writing goes. It was my goal to finish the book this week, but I had a lot of other work too. So Friday night I sat down, with three events that had to happen in the book yet to go. I spent all of Friday evening getting one chapter done that just didn't want to go together. I knew exactly what was going to happen, but I had a hard time telling the story and making it believable, suspenseful, etc.

So on Saturday, I still had two events to go, to finish the book. I completed my regular on-line work by 11 am, and sat down to write. Small breaks for lunch, dog walking, getting a drink, etc, but I basically just typed as fast as I could until 5:30 pm. Everything just flowed out with no problems or agonizing over how to get from point A to point B. That turned out to be five more chapters, so the total is 35 chapters, at just over 34,000 words. This is fairly short for a book, but I've decided that's ok, this time.

At 5:30, I printed out the first complete copy, and took it to the beta reader. Wow- just WOW.

I believe I'm on track to have the e-book available by the end of November.

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3 comments:

Loretta said...

YAY, Joan must be an awesome feeling to have it in the hands of readers. Congrats! Glad to hear that you are getting a lot of work now also while the weather is still good!

Reena said...

Just awesome! A great achievement!

Glynis Peters said...

Congratulations, Joan! For some reason I have not been getting the feed from here. Good news!