Finished! Plus, link to a celebratory recipe. Plus, what should I read now that I have time?

For certain generous values of “finished.” But, yay! First rough draft is in fact done! 118,000 words, which is an excellent rough draft length — I will do my best to cut a minimum of 10,000 words. That’s only 8 percent; how hard can it be? Right?

Right?

I celebrated by making this super-indulgent recipe for breakfast on Sunday. It should come with a warning: MAKE FOR A CROWD. YOU CAN’T EAT JUST ONE. Not that I was trying to stop at just one, but honestly, hard to stop after a dozen, too. I made half the recipe and it’s amazing how many coconutty-chocolatety little biscuit things you can devour in one day. Mmm.

The ganache would be totally gilding the lily, but I admit I didn’t bother with that part.

So, anyway. Tonight I want to switch one smallish scene to Natividad’s pov, since for some inexplicable reason I didn’t do that in the first place. I don’t know what the back of my writerly brain was thinking that I didn’t do it that way in the first place. Honestly, brain, get a clue.

Then I have a list of about, I don’t know, a dozen things that I need to fiddle with. Some are specific and therefore easy; some are the kind of tweak-through-the-whole-manuscript thing that is enormously tedious and annoying. Then there is always the difficult decision about whether everybody has a clear character arc and the fiddling necessary to make sure the answer is Yes. For this one, there is also the equally difficult decision about whether the two plotlines tie together well enough. (If they don’t, I’m sure my agent, Caitlin will tell me ALL about it, she has an invaluable eye for that kind of thing.)

But! I don’t intend to tackle the real revision until September, maybe even mid-September, because often these things work better with a little time to rest. So in the meantime, I will definitely be choosing some great books to read. But what?

On my physical TBR shelves, I have RANGE OF GHOSTS by Elizabeth Bear — you know, I have never read anything by Bear? Also UNDER HEAVEN by Kay, and NAMAAH’S KISS by Carey. Among a lot of other things, naturally. I would really like to whittle down the number of books on the TBR shelves, which are overflowing just a trifle. Maybe I could go on an Asian-setting kick and read the NAMAAH trilogy and UNDER HEAVEN and SNAKE AGENT by Liz Williams? That would help with the overflow problem.

Then on my Kindle, among many other things, I have CROWN DUEL and COURT DUEL by Sherwood Smith — another writer I have never read anything by, which I would like to correct. So many of the titles I am most enthusiastic about are on my Kindle, it can be hard to make myself look at the physical TBR shelves.

And even beyond the Kindle! On my Amazon wishlist, which I use pretty much as a subsidiary memory? On there I have some fabulous titles. I am so behind. I may be the only person on Earth not to have read CODE NAME VERITY by Elizabeth Wein yet. Of course I will love it, but I’m not sure I’m in the mood for something that intense.

So many books! Can we have twice as many hours in the day, just for September?