October's writing progress

The first thing to say is that I survived the open mic night I mentioned last month, and I even sold a couple of books. My main grumble was that the lighting wasn't great, which made me nervous that I'd lose my place whenever I looked up to try to make eye contact with the audience. (It didn't matter for most of the other performers, as they were mostly singer-songwriters, who of course are expected to know their material by heart.)

Since then, I've appeared at a few other local events, all organised by the writers' group that I may or may not have mentioned joining in the spring. They've been fun, and it's been interesting to see how other authors approach the task of engaging with the public and potential readers.

Progress on the Dragonrider sequel has been very good this month - 19,000 words, meaning the first draft now stands at 87,000 words. The only slight concern is that when my critique group read chapter 33 recently, one of them said, "I think this is where your story really starts." I knew I had some trimming to do, but damn...