Close, but far
I sat down for a long day of writing on the 25th. It was my first day writing after a week of being terribly sick, so I didn’t have high expectations, but my husband had given me the whole Saturday to myself (in exchange for a Saturday he took for himself in October) so I would be able to catch up on everything I wanted to do but couldn’t.
By the time I ran out of steam and decided to call it a day, it was just before 4 PM and I’d done a total of 5 hours of writing, bringing in north of 6,000 solid words and creeping across the 50,000 mark for November. Happy NaNoWriMo to me. I hadn’t participated last year; I didn’t have the time. I wasn’t sure I’d have the time this year, since I lost the first week of November and then lost a week to being ill, but somehow, it all came together.
Paragon of Light is close to done, but the book is running longer than I projected. At this pace, it will take another 2 weeks to finish, which means it will finally head off for edits after December 9th and should be ready for the world to see it some time in January. I may aim to have the release somewhere near my birthday, but now that the book is really real and I have something to show for all the work I’ve done this month, I’ll be sharing the cover with my newsletter subscribers… and sharing it with the rest of the world after me and my editor figure out a realistic timeline for when the book will be finished. No rushing for this one!
With all the trials I’ve had this fall, I’ll probably take a week or so off in December to catch up on other things. There are Christmas crafts to make, cards to mail, a tree to put up, and a bathroom to remodel while we try to conquer the extremely discouraging discovery of extensive black mold. We’ve demolished the hardest part, but I still have a whole ceramic tile floor to chisel out before I can start scabbing in new wood and picking out tile for the rebuild. Now that I consider how much work that will be, I think two weeks might be more realistic.
Fortunately, edits are usually the easy part for me; I expect I’ll be able to fly through pretty fast, and the moment Paragon of Light is done, I’ll be diving into the next writing project. I’m excited to continue Spectrum Legacy, but I’ll have a short story to share soon, and I’m looking forward to that one, too.
For now, I’m enjoying a quiet moment in a quiet living room watching the rain and the leaves falling down. We skipped all the pretty weather and went straight from the end of summer’s heat to a wet and chilly fall, so I feel like I got cheated out of my days of writing outdoors or sitting with the windows open, but we’re doing extra decorating for Christmas and I’m close to having another book done.
If you’re subbed to my newsletter, you’ll get the first peek at Paragon of Light’s cover later this week. And if not… well, you’ll just have to wait. 
