Intimate History Book One is at the editor

Annetta Ribken, my long-suffering editor, finally has all 140,000 or so words of "The Intimate History of the Greater Kingdom: Curse of the Traveler Queen" (working title). It's 576 pages in manuscript, 373 estimated in paperback, and she's read the first 160 pages or so. She says it's a page-turner, and that as an editor she's ecstatic. I'm so relieved! Rewriting book one (which actually turned into tearing all three books apart and re-assembling them) was one of the hardest things I've ever done, and I'm still not sure I have an ending. Now I have to figure out what happens between "year one" and "year ten," when Temmin becomes king, or at least in what order since I know a good deal about what happens already!

Anyway, I still don't know when the book will be ready. Netta is still reading, and then she'll have to go back through to give me notes. Then I have to take the notes and work with them. Then I send it out to my beta group. Then I make any necessary adjustments, and start working on publication. The people who've invested in the History get the finished manuscript before anyone else, even before it's been formatted into a book. (They'll get the ebook version in their preferred format as well, and a signed paperback copy.)

And I just had a great brainstorm about the final book of the History and the culmination of a planned arc. yay!

Thanks to everyone who's supported me emotionally, artistically and financially throughout these last two-plus years.

BY THE WAY! If you need an editor, and really, don't we all, HIRE NETTA! She is fabulous--kind, encouraging, bullying when necessary. She gets out and pushes. :D She understands genre as well as literary fiction, can handle nonfiction, and is an all-around best kept secret who shouldn't be secret any more. I couldn't have written this book without her, quite literally.