Just like that…roughly 86,000 words and 7 years later, I have finished my first novel.

Making the decision to self-publish took little thought, but lots of research. I always thought it would be cool to publish it someday. But I didn’t think that day would be within the next 12 months. I was inspired to push myself to publish by an elementary school friend. She’s publishing her first novel this year as well; C.T. Barney is the author of the Cleo series. Check out her site here: https://ctbarney.com/

I’ve begun my first round of self edits. In a way, it’s a second round for me. Initially I wrote The Extension Project in a different POV and decided to change it. But it’s the first round of polishing the story. It can be hard to remove aspects of my vision for MC’s world. But I am noticing that it’s for the best. Removing unnecessary information that drags scenes on too long, changing words, getting rid of that damn passive voice that seems to be so present in my brain that it makes constant appearances on the pages.

I’ve found an editor who wants to work with me once it’s more polished. She did a sample edit of the first 10-ish pages  and gave some really great comments for me to think about while going through. Editing is much slower than writing. I am averaging about 1 page per night. But there’s not much dialog that I’m going through yet. Once I get to that point it might speed up a bit. 

I’ve also hired an artist for my cover work. So more updates on that in the future when the commission time approaches. Hopefully he can take my excess of ideas and help solidify it into something REALLY awesome.

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Happy Reading!