Words: 3,573.
Total words: 34,573.
Reason for stopping: end of chapter six, time to move on.
Music: Emilie Autumn, rocking the goth.
Lilly: asleep in the middle of my coat.

Chapter six of The Mourning Edition is finished! Ha! I bet you thought I forgot, didn't you? That I'd wandered off to greener pastures? Not this zombie girl! The living dead continue to be one of my life's great joys. It's just that sometimes, those great joys get faintly derailed by the need to battle Toby to a stand-still. Something about the girl having her own series already under contract makes her all pushy. I have no idea where she gets that...

So anyway, The Mourning Edition continues apace, and my understanding of the world is continuing to expand. Chapter six actually took as long as it did to finish because I kept back-tracking, ripping things out, and planting them later in the text. (Also because I got distracted perfecting my story for Grants Pass, but come on, the nice people invited me to their pandemic. They deserve the best I can possibly give them.)

I'm heading to Seattle for the holidays again this year, and while there's going to be a lot of rehearsal crammed into a reasonably small stretch of time, I'm also expecting long days where everybody else is off at work, and I can just write. If this goes anything like last year, I'm basically going to power through fifty thousand words and then look faintly confused.

And now, bed.

Current stats, The Mourning Edition:

Words: 2,440.
Total words: 31,010.
Reason for stopping: the cold medication says writing is hard now.
Music: mostly show tunes.
Lilly: really wishing I'd stop coughing.

I am now solidly into chapter six of The Mourning Edition. It was a bit rocky at first; it's always rocky going from one Book into another. (Remember that, in this context, a 'Book' is an internal division within the greater novel. Newsflesh was five Books and a Coda. The Mourning Edition will probably be something similar.) I'm still inside the general word count region that I consider to be '20% of the way there.' This is good. This is very, very good, when you compare it to the speed with which Newsflesh was written (see also 'glacial,' at least by local standards).

It makes me happy to realize that I have one full book finished, about one-fifth of another book in first draft, and an outline for the entire series. I feel very much like a real author when I can say things like that. Of course, I also feel very much like a real author when I give myself concussions to get more sleep at conventions, so hey.

And now, as a special bonus treat before it splinters off into its own recurring entry...

Current stats, The Brightest Fell:

Total words: 20,305.
Reason for stopping: again, the cold medicine is king right now.
Music: mostly show tunes.
Lilly: probably afraid of cross-species transmission.

Yes, this is Toby Daye, book five, and yes, I'm almost as far into it as I am into the second Mason book. Don't judge me! I'm a compulsive sequel-writer, it's what makes me happy, and besides, I want to have as much done as humanly possible before Rosemary and Rue hits shelves. Some people don't want to commit to long series, and I realize that. Others don't want to commit to book one unless they know for sure that books two and three are really and truly going to happen. Since I can't conceal the fact that this is a long series, I'm going to do my best to provide proof that honest, the whole thing is going to happen. Really. I'm writing the rest right now.

Since I am now nicely cushioned on a backlog of lovely words with which to pacify my various editors, I'm going to return to my sick day.

Current stats:

Words: 4,760.
Total words: 28,570.
Reason for stopping: chapter five and book one are finished.
Music: oddly enough, lots of folk music.
Lilly: queen of everything atop her cat tree.

As predicted, the end of chapter five of The Mourning Edition was also the end of Book I! Woo-hoo! So now I can honestly answer "How's the book going?" with "Oh, I finished it yesterday, I'm working on the next one now." (This is fun because of the looks it makes people give me. I adore confusing my friends.) Also, the end of Book I brings us past the magical hundred-page mark. Yes! This book is now over a hundred pages. The magical stamp of 'I can be a real novel when I grow up' has been applied. Since Newsflesh came in at just under 150,000 words, I'm going to take a wild stab in the dark and say that I am now 20% of the way to 'done.' So that doesn't suck, either.

(Book I, for the curious, was titled 'Point of Infection.' Book II is titled 'Vectors and Victims.' Telling you the titles of the various books really doesn't give anything away unless you have the actual text to provide some much-needed context. Because I'm just sneaky that way. Also, zombies.)

The Newsflesh/Mourning Edition universe is an incredibly fun one to play around in, even though each individual book has a body count that basically equals what I've managed in five volumes of Toby. (The series really needs a better title. I usually just call them 'the Mason books' and figure people know what I'm talking about.)

Zombies.

Yay.

Current stats:

Words: 543.
Total words: 24,011.
Reason for stopping: finished chapter seven.
Music: lots of things on random shuffle.
Lilly: dead to the world.

Five hundred words feels a bit, well, anti-climactic, but since it brings me to the end of chapter seven, I figure I won't complain too hard. This book is currently spec-ed out as coming in somewhere in the 80,000 to 100,000 word range, so I'm very close to being a quarter of the way there no matter what yardstick I'm using. Yippee!

Writing a book is a lot like riding a roller coaster. Sometimes it goes so fast that you're barely aware of what's happening until you're going 'wait, did we just...?', and other times, you're trundling slowly up the track, totally in the moment, just waiting for the plummeting to start. Right now, I'm about two-thirds of the way up the first of the book's really high hills, and I think there's probably a corkscrew waiting at the bottom.

I can hardly wait.

Current stats:

Words: 3,200.
Total words: 23,468.
Reason for stopping: it's time for bed.
Music: the new We're About 9 album.
Lilly: in my lap, like a big fuzzy sausage that purrs.

I feel like I've been horribly neglecting this book as Late Eclipses of the Sun and the setup for The Brightest Fell devour my brain. At the same time, slipping back into Verity's world is like putting on a pair of well-loved fuzzy slippers. Fuzzy slippers that may decide to digest my feet and lay eggs in my chest cavity, but still, fuzzy slippers.

Oh, and since the last time I posted a word count, I didn't know the name of the third Verity book yet, here you go: Professional Goreography. (Yes, the second word of that title is pronounced to sound like 'choreography.') It's possibly my worst book title pun yet, and that's saying a lot coming from the author of Newsflesh.

I am now at the point where my plot is driving the situation, rather than my need to introduce characters and setting driving the situation. I love that particular click-over moment in my books. (There are books where situation is in the driver's seat from page one -- Upon A Star anyone? -- but I usually go for the slower build. It's more satisfying.)

I am a happy kitty.

On July 2nd, I started the preliminary end-to-end dissection and revisions on Late Eclipses of the Sun, aka, 'Toby Daye, book four,' aka, 'the first book I don't actually have a contract for yet.' (Because that's ever once stopped me.) Now, almost four months later, I'm ready to toss the 'dear sweet gods above, below, sideways, and in the Menswear Department, it's FINALLY DONE' current draft into the pit of wolverines that is my initial readers.

The current book stats:

Pages, 417.
Words, 115,310.
Chapters, thirty-six.
Cans of DDP, beyond counting.

There's still going to be some rather severe correction ahead, and this book needs at least another month of work before my agent gets to see it (because otherwise, she will beat me with my own keyboard, and I don't like that game), but this is closer to the country of 'done' than we've ever been with this particular manuscript. And now I can finally start prodding at The Brightest Fell, aka, 'Toby Daye, book five,' aka, 'Seanan, honey, can we please wait for Rosemary and Rue to come out before you finish the second set of three?'

In conclusion...

...DINO DANCE PARTY!

Current stats:

Words: 3,598.
Total words: 20,268.
Reason for stopping: the end of chapter six is ours.
Music: lots of Broadway musicals.
Lilly: sacked out on the bed with her head on my planner.

Woo! Forward momentum! Late Eclipses of the Sun is eating the bulk of my attention right now -- to the point where look, it's even getting mentioned in the word count post for a book from a completely different series -- but I'm really glad I blocked off today for working on Discount Armageddon, because wow, does Verity improve my outlook on life. She's refreshingly blunt, and just so much fun to play with.

My cast is still fresh and new to me, so it's awesome watching the way that they react to various situations. Yes, I'm setting up a series, but the world is entirely shiny and new, and allows me to do whatever I darn well want with it. Yippee!

Because I've been asked: yes, this is an ongoing series, but it's structured to allow for natural stopping points every two or three books. The first two books focus on Verity, and are Discount Armageddon and the followup, Midnight Blue-Light Special. The third Verity book will be number five in the series, and doesn't have a name yet.

Whee!

Current stats:

Words: 3,797.
Total words: 16,670.
Reason for stopping: chapter five is closed and done.
Music: mostly salsa music, actually.
Lilly: sacked out on the bed.

I've managed to break fifty pages (and then some -- the book is currently at sixty-one pages), introduce pretty much all my major characters and supporting family members, work in several scenes involving hyperactive religious mice, and drop Verity off several buildings. (This statement is not really a spoiler, as dropping Verity off buildings is currently one of my favorite occupations. It's soothing.)

My mother thinks this series may be the best thing I've ever come up with. I blame this on the fact that she's a huge fan of several reality-based dance competitions, and I use a reality-based dance competition in the series. (Book five is actually set at a reunion of the cast from Verity's year. Yeah, it's already acquired a book five. Don't look at me like that.)

Next up, I start beating people about the head and shoulders with plot, and probably throw Verity off a few more buildings. Life is good.

Current stats:

Words: 3,893.
Total words: 12,873.
Reason for stopping: chapter four is ready to hit the dance floor.
Music: all Counting Crows, all day long.
Lilly: sound asleep on the filing cabinets.

The game's afoot, the gang's all here, and we've finally managed to break 10,000 words. I'm only two pages shy of breaking fifty pages, too, which is always an awesome feeling (second only to breaking a hundred -- every time a book reaches a hundred pages, I have the serious urge to throw a massive and debauched revel). I'm incredibly pleased with the way things are progressing, and I'm even managing to stick reasonably close to the series proposal outline. Which is something of a miracle.

Coming up with the bumper quotes that begin every chapter is far too much fun to be actually legal. They're just random little bits of 'family wisdom,' but they're awesome. The nice thing about bumper quotes is that as long as they fit the story and set the mood you're looking for, they don't have to flow; they're like darlings in amber, yours forever.

I estimate this book at two chapters from becoming substantially more difficult to write, as the heavy-duty plot kicks in, but it's all so much fun that I'm even looking forward to that.

Current stats:

Words: 6,080.
Total words: 23,810.
Reason for stopping: I'm done with chapter four!
Music: mostly Rob Zombie. Hey, it's topical.
Lilly: dead to the world in the middle of my glow-in-the-dark spiderweb pillow.

Like Newsflesh, The Mourning Edition is a novel internally divided into 'books.' (Hey, it's a fun structure to play with, and my happy zombie wonderland was the first chance I really got to take advantage of it. Besides, it's nicely confusing, because it makes the answer to "How's the book going?" entirely unpredictable.) I am now four chapters into Book I, and it looks like Book II is going to start with chapter six. I'm one chapter away from the end of Book I. Also, since the chapters are averaging roughly twenty pages each, I'm one chapter away from hitting the hundred-page mark.

Excuse me while I blink a lot and go 'um, dude.' It's interesting: I understand that I write a lot, and I understand that my 'rotate projects so that everything stays fresh and engaging and you get more done' method of approaching books means that they gain page count at a scary rate, but I'm always a little tweaked when I hit a hundred pages. That's my internal watermark for 'sorry, you've devoted too much time; can't walk away now.'

It's too late to walk out on this book.

Secretly, I'm glad.

Current stats:

Words: 3,130.
Total words: 8,980
Reason for stopping: chapter three is in the can!
Music: weird covers and We're About 9, alternating.
Lilly: standing guard by my chair.

Everybody dance now! No, seriously. With chapter three in the can, I'm getting a firm handle on my world, my situation, and best of all, my main character. (Especially when writing a first book with a new POV person, I can take a few chapters to really figure out what I'm doing. Which is what the second draft is for, obviously.)

Can I just note that this book is so damn fun to write? It should probably be criminal for me to spend this much time giggling to myself, and it's not just because of the mice. Also, it's a great excuse to go mucking happily around in cryptid biology. I am a very happy blonde right now.

I will now go eat tuna fish, watch television, and relax, all bathed in righteousness and glory.

Current stats:

Words: 5,750.
Total words: 5,750.
Reason for stopping: I finished chapter two.
Music: the soundtrack to Weird Romance.
Lilly: standing guard by my chair.

I basically reset the word counter, because I had to rip up and re-do everything after I realized that I had started this book from the wrong point of view. Lots and lots and lots of work. On the other hand? The book is awesome now. First draft awesome, which means it's all going to change, and in six months I'll look back on this post and be all 'what were you smoking?' at myself, but still, I can see that it is awesome, and that it has the potential to rock my tiny world.

Every chapter begins with a little quote from one of the members of the extended family -- and it's very, very extended; I have four generations totally mapped, with options on generations five and six -- to sort of give you an idea of what sort of upbringing our dear Very is the product of. I love the book, but these quotes may be my favorite part. Well, those, and the mice.

So the first two chapters are now out for review, and I'm going to return to somewhat more pressing pursuits, like processing edits for Late Eclipses of the Sun and Lycanthropy and Other Personal Issues and The Mourning Edition and dear gods, I am clearly an android. But I'm a happy android. I have introduced people to Verity.

All good things will come from here.

Current stats:

Words: 3,080.
Total words: 4,195.
Reason for stopping: I finished chapter one.
Music: weird covers and salsa music, mostly.
Lilly: asleep in the bed.

Good news: I have finished the first chapter of Discount Armageddon, part one in the story of Verity 'Very' Price, possibly the world's only professional salsa dancer-slash-cryptozoologist (which is a combination that very rarely comes up on Craig's List). Chapter one of a brand new book, all finished and shiny!

Bad news: Yeah, I totally wrote that from the wrong POV. I was trying to experiment with actually writing a book in the third person for a change, and while that's an awesome goal that will one day be accomplished -- probably with Nativity of Chance -- this is not the book to accomplish it with. Just for giggles, I translated a few paragraphs from third person to first person, and was suddenly handed a great big bucket of awesome. Let that be a lesson to me.

Good news: I figured out what I was doing wrong after 4,000 words, not 40,000 words, and with me, that's always a bit of a risk. So while I'm going to have to do a lot of revision and rewriting and reframing, it's going to be a lot lighter and less painful than it might otherwise have been. Again, this is the good news part of our program.

Bad news: The fact that I need to do this at all is going to set me back several days in my overly-ambitious personal timeline. But again, that's okay; it means I won't get another fifty pages of text finished and wind up going 'aw, shit' as I'm forced to tear it all out and throw it all away. Flashbacks and prior-to-current-generation material remains third person, everything else, going straight to first.

And that's a wrap.

Current stats:

Words: 1,115.
Total words: 1,115.
Reason for stopping: I had to go to my epidural.
Music: the Broadway revival of Little Shop of Horrors.
Lilly: sacked out in my lap.

Please note the lovely new icon. What does the lovely new icon mean? The lovely new icon means there's a lovely new book in the neighborhood, kicking ass and taking names. And doing it in high heels roughly half the time, mind you. Meet Verity 'Very' Price, the eldest girl in the current generation of a family of cryptozoologists working to protect the cryptids of North America from mankind -- and mankind from them.

Discount Armageddon is the first of two books to feature Verity. The second is Midnight Blue-Light Special, but that is, thankfully, some distance in the future. Anyway, a thousand words is a drop in the bucket, but it's a drop that gives me something to work from, and more, it's letting me test my footing in this new universe. The only people on-screen so far are Very and the mice, and that's more than enough for the moment. Besides, the mice can take up a lot of screen.

Verity Price. Kicking cryptid ass with ballroom dance so you don't have to.

Here go:

Chapters revised so far: twenty-eight
Total words: 71,225
Reason for stopping: I, uh, sort of ran out of book.
Music: weird cover songs from Merav.
Lilly: prowling madly about the room.

So I'm having a minor surgical procedure tomorrow -- a lumbar epidural, to help with my back pain issues -- and that means I'm all wound-up and twitchy. Wound tighter than a cheap cuckoo clock, that's me. And when I get wound-up, I either watch horror movies, or I write. Since the television is currently in use, well...

Draft 1.5 is now essentially done. Oh, I'll be sending it to my proofreaders for another pass, and I'll give it a week or so before I tackle it again, but it's time to stop playing about with fractions: it's time to commit to writing a second draft of the book. That's going to mean a loss of something like seven thousand words (and yes, Brooke, many of them will be 'largely'), and probably some changes that I can't even guess at yet, but the fabulous thing is?

You can't have a second draft without having a first draft. And now that I've finished laying down the spit and polish and plaster on the book as it currently stands, I feel like I really have a first draft. And I like it.

Finishing books is awesome.

Current stats:

Words: 5,420.
Total words: 17,730.
Reason for stopping: chapter three is finished.
Music: Science Groove! Also, really weird cover songs.
Lilly: prowling around the room and spelunking in my dresser drawers.

This book remains both very comfortable -- it's a return to the world of Newsflesh! How could it be anything but comfortable? I love that world like burning -- and very complicated, since it's been a while since I first pulled Newsflesh off the ground and sent it racing downhill. And it's very weird to be doing this in tandem with the rewrite on Lycanthropy and Other Personal Issues, because of the differences in scale. 'Barely started' for The Mourning Edition is the same as 'a third of the way' in Lycanthropy.

Soon, I get to start sinking my teeth into my gonzo zombie-verse virology in a big, big way, and that delights me all the way down to the bottom of my incurably geeky little soul. Also, I'm making substantially faster progress on this book than I did on the first one of the series, which I consider to be an awesomely good sign.

I'm king of the dead! Er, queen. Er...something.

Here go:

Chapters revised so far: sixteen
Total words: 71,220
Reason for stopping: finished through chapter sixteen, so it was time to flip the draft.
Music: weird cover songs from Merav.
Lilly: somehow spread out to cover the entire pillow.

It's official: this book gets the award for 'best proof that Seanan needs to never take more than six months to write a fluffy book,' because it has some of the most spectacular continuity errors ever. So far, my lead has changed home towns twice inside of the text (the final home town: Red Wing, Minnesota), one of my secondary characters has changed species -- which somehow, nobody noticed -- and my antagonist has completely changed physical description. As these aren't supposed to be that sort of shapeshifter, well...

This is draft 1.5 so that I can worry about fixing these problems and smoothing out my sequencing and all that without worrying about making cuts to the text -- hence the word count creeping slowly but steadily upwards. When I hit the end of the draft and start in on the second draft, I'll start whacking away until I lose ten percent. On the plus side, I have Brooke, so that ten percent will be largely modifiers.

The future's so bright, I gotta wear shades. And not because I'm suffering from degenerative retinal Kellis-Amberlee, either.

Current stats:

Words: 1,050.
Total words: 12,310.
Reason for stopping: I've reached the end of chapter two.
Music: mostly Broadway soundtracks, that being my current crazy.
Lilly: loafed up next to my chair, guarding me from the scary, scary hallway.

This brings me to the second of my major milestones on this book. Milestone number one was ten thousand words. Milestone number two was reaching the end of chapter two, which would give me sufficient 'book' for me to feel like it was time for me to send the text-to-date to my proofing list for its very first review. This is the point where my baby gets to leave my hands for the very first time, and as always, it makes me sad and jubilant and a little scared. But excited, too. Because I love all my literary children, and it's wonderful to set them free.

I'm really excited about this universe, which is good, since I'm really only getting off the ground with book two of a planned three book series -- losing my enthusiasm for the world now would really suck for me. And for the people who want to know what happens next. I think they'd beat me with my own machete until I stopped screwing around and gave them their zombies already. Which is pretty damn awesome, when you really stop to think about it.

Working on this in tandem with the revisions to Lycanthropy and Other Personal Issues is actually a really good thing, because it lets me 'cleanse my palate' between chapters, as it were. From zombie adventure to frothy horror chick werecoyote adventure in two easy steps.

Life is pretty good right now.

Here go:

Words: 6,980
Total words: 70,060
Reason for stopping: finished THE ENTIRE BOOK. YES, IT'S DONE.
Music: largely, musical soundtracks.
Lilly: conked out on my bed.

First draft stats:

Pages: 246
Chapters: twenty-eight
Started: July 21, 2005
Finished: August 11, 2008

I think this may be the longest shortest first draft I've ever written -- the book is less than half the length of Newsflesh, yet took over a year longer to finish. I blame this on the tragic fact that Lycanthropy and Other Personal Issues kept getting relegated to the literary status of 'other woman' -- the book I really loved, yet turned to only after I'd finished my obligations to more 'important' commitments. If I were Clady, I would have long since tracked me down and kicked me in the teeth, that's all I'm saying here.

The bulk of the work on this book was done in the past eight months.

I still intend to go back and flesh out some of the earlier sequences a bit more thoroughly now that I know what my overall pacing looks like; because of that, and a few continuity adjustments, I'm planning to declare a 'draft 1.5' and add to the text, before cutting ten percent with draft two. It makes sense if you're me (and is actually how I managed Newsflesh, which turned out to have two missing chapters). But it's done. It's finally done. And I think it's a better book for having taken the time, because I've learned so much in the past few years.

It's done. Tonight, I will sleep the sleep of the just and the joyous.

It's done.

Current stats:

Words: 1,222.
Total words: 11,260.
Reason for stopping: if I don't go to sleep, I am literally going to pass out.
Music: random things, including a small child telling me about her day.
Lilly: presumably back in Concord, unless she's gone looking for me.

I'm at David and Michelle's for the weekend, but would have felt bad if I didn't at least pretend to do some work on The Mourning Edition. So I pretended my way through a thousand words and a big chunk of the current chapter, which is, y'know, pretty impressive, if a little bit unnerving. I should pretend more often.

Please note that as of this entry, The Mourning Edition has its own icon. That means it's a real book. Also, that means I got my Photoshop working for a little while today. All things come with time and with grace. (I have no idea what I'm going to use as a Discount Armageddon icon, I really don't.)

Progress is pleasing unto me, and I really like where this book seems to be going. We're still in setup, but it's very solid and substantial setup, and it makes me happy. Also, I got to map the driving route between Birds Landing and Berkeley, and that confused Google Maps to no end. Life is good.

Zombies improve everything.

Here go:

Words: 4,060
Total words: 63,080
Reason for stopping: finished chapter twenty-four.
Music: whatever happened to be playing at the time.
Lilly: asleep in my tank top drawer. Again.

I managed to find a) my additional word count, and b) Jason without his shirt on. I basically win at writing. I have defeated all those who might oppose me, and I have returned home with the finest spoils of battle. Said spoils are going to require whacking with a machete before they really qualify as 'awesome,' rather than just 'potentially so awesome it makes my teeth hurt,' but that's why I have a machete. Without a machete, there's so very much that you just can't do.

Almost everything that I have left in this book is wham-wham-wham-action-adventure-wham, which is always fun (and fast) to write. Especially when I'm dealing with Clady, who's seen every horror movie ever made, and is thus immune to many of the stupid horror movie girl cliches. She still makes mistakes. It's just that they're very different mistakes, full of unexpected badness. Putting a horror movie savvy character into a horror movie world is just so much fun. I should have done it years ago. Except that, had I done it years ago, it wouldn't have been Clady. So I suppose there's a reason that everything happens in its own time.

This book has, at most, 10,000 words left to go. And I am loving every single one of 'em. Whee!

Current stats:

Words: 6,948.
Total words: 10,038.
Reason for stopping: it's time to get ready to go out, and I haven't eaten.
Music: my Newsflesh playlist, which needs to be updated, but still mostly applies.
Lilly: in and out of the room all morning long.

So Friday night, I said 'I am going to hit ten thousand words on The Mourning Edition this weekend,' because I am sometimes a cocky little brat. And indeed, it is now late Sunday morning, and I started writing at seven AM, and I have just hit ten thousand words on The Mourning Edition. Sometimes, cockiness comes with certain undeniable rewards.

I realized after finishing what I thought was chapter one that I had, in fact, written the second half of chapter two and the first half of chapter three; it's good text, but it's not a beginning, it's a middle, and this needs to be an entirely new book. That's okay, because writing it to begin with had managed to shift me into the right mindset for a party with the Masons, and the new chapter one came just as sweet and smooth as silk. I am utterly pleased.

Assuming this book keeps true to the pattern of the first in the series, I am approximately one-seventeenth of the way through my first draft. I can basically live with that.

I love my zombies. They make it better.

Here go:

Words: 2,320
Total words: 59,020
Reason for stopping: finished chapter twenty-three.
Music: lots of really, really random-ass cover songs.
Lilly: harassing Terence without pause or mercy.

So I was complaining about needing more word count on this book, and talking about how I was going to go back and tweak with things and add more meat to the text. And then? A chapter that wasn't in my outline at all showed up and demanded inclusion. Hello, new chapter. How've you been? Me? Oh, I'm fine. Anyway, I'm back on track with my outline now, although I've managed to add over two thousand words without actually finishing one of the five chapters I have left to go...and that's sort of awesome, since this chapter is wicked-cool and made of win. No shirtless Jason, but still, total win.

The book has some very visible pacing problems, probably because the poor thing has had to deal with me starting and stopping more times than rush hour traffic; it really got caught in an unenviable position on the work-list, first as my backup book during Newsflesh and then as my backup book during the high-octane Toby revisions. Now that it's the primary book, it's like it can't believe I'm not just going to yank the football away again, and I can understand that, really I can. That doesn't change the fact that I'm going to hammer the rest of it like...something that hammers things really, really well, and then I'm going to edit it thoroughly, fix all the pacing problems, and throw a dino dance party like the world has never seen.

I really love my screwed-up little high school lycanthropes. And I can't wait to have them out of my head.

Here go:

Words: 4,440
Total words: 56,700
Reason for stopping: finished chapter twenty-two.
Music: my 'dead stuff' playlist, and The Last Five Years.
Lilly: doubtless plotting to conquer the world.

According to my outline, I'm rapidly approaching the minimum length for this book. Also according to my outline, I have roughly five chapters left. Now, that's going to leave me with a book that's somewhat shorter than I want it to be...but that's okay, because it means that draft 1.5 will consist, not of editing, but of finding all the juicy bits that I rushed past in my urge to find out what was going to happen next. That's pretty awesome, actually. I love knowing that I get to back-track and add more of the good stuff.

(If I can find a way for 'the good stuff' to include Jason taking off his shirt, I think I'll reward myself with pumpkin cake and a bubble bath. Because the world always needs more of Jason-sans-shirt.)

I'm actually starting to see the light at the end of the seemingly endless tunnel that this book has been. Given that my previous YA book, Upon a Star, took me less than a month to write, I'm really relieved that this one is wrapping up, and more, that I'm still utterly in love with these characters. I can fall out of love with a book -- I usually do, by the time the editing process is done, although I'm fickle enough that I always take them back in the end -- but as long as I don't fall out of love with the characters, I'm fine.

Yay, Clady.

Current stats:

Words: 3,090.
Total words: 0.
Reason for stopping: need to eat dinner before I eat the cat.
Music: mostly Children of Eden and Dr. Horrible.
Lilly: nowhere to be seen, which should probably worry me.

How do you know I'm in the middle of editing three books and feeling the specter of free time looming over me in a dark and spooky fashion? I start a new book, of course. (Honestly, I should probably have been spending the time working on Lycanthropy, but as I spent the entire day at a funeral, I think I can be excused a little cathartic zombie-time.)

It took a little thought to really figure out how to slide back into the dark, slightly twisted dystopia inhabited by the Mason twins and the Kellis-Amberlee virus (coming soon to a CDC installation near you!), but once I got the rhythm back, I got it back. I blinked and it had been ten pages and a couple of thousand words. Not that three thousand words means much when the first book finished at roughly 150,000, but hey, every little bit counts.

I love my zombies. They make it better.

Updated book stats:

Total words: 149,220.
Previous words: 156,890.
Loss between drafts: 7,670.
Total chapters: thirty-one chapters, divided into five 'books' and a coda.
Total pages: 544 (30 page decrease).
Draft one started: September 4th, 2005, on the plane back from Seattle.
Draft one finished: December 27th, 2007, sitting at Tony's kitchen table, in Seattle.
Draft one edits finished: June 3rd, 2008, in my bedroom.
Draft two started: June 3rd, 2008, also in my bedroom.
Draft two finished: July 7th, still in my bedroom. I don't move much.

I have finished the second draft of Feed, my epic novel of zombies, politics, blogging, how George Romero accidentally saved the world and the tragic duty of the journalist. Now I get to process copy-edits and frantically jab my subject matter experts with sticks. ("Hey, you said my tech was outdated. Dude, can you tell me how? Please? Ack!")

Seriously, this book has been so much work, and there's more work to come, but wow, has it turned into something amazing. I am so very proud of this entire thing. It's huge and sprawling and epic and wonderful, and I still love it, even after hammering my head against it for all this time. Which I think is a good sign.

I love my little zombies.

Right. Today, I have...

...processed three full sets of edits for An Artificial Night, one of which was twenty pages long and may as well have been subtitled 'everything you know is wrong.' I have now repaired everything I know. Everything I know is now right, and it's a better book (as it almost always is after one of these experiences). But oh my stars and garters, that took hours.

...brought my initial rewrites on Newsflesh up through chapter eighteen. Note that Newsflesh is over five hundred pages long. I have essentially rewritten an entire book this week, with another entire book to go, just as soon as I wake up. This terrifies and thrills me on multiple levels, and it's really very cathartic to wade into the text with a machete and giggle hysterically as I remove the unnecessary words.

This week, I have...

...started the revision process on Late Eclipses of the Sun, the fourth book in the Toby Daye series, which is currently subtitled 'please let the first three be incredible, mind-blowing successes, so that I can sell this book, because I love it so.' Because I am occasionally an insane workaholic, I'm already more than a hundred pages into the revision. It's very soothing. I'm enjoying it.

This weekend, I'm going to get back to work on Lycanthropy and Other Personal Issues, because I feel like a slacker. (Yes, I'm aware of the sheer insanity of that statement. Carry on.) And with all this done and yet to do, I am going to bed, where I will sleep the sleep of the just.

Good night, world!

Updated book stats:

Total words: 156,890*
Total chapters: thirty-one chapters, divided into five 'books' and a coda.
Total pages: 574.
Started: September 4th, 2005, on the plane back from Seattle.
Finished: December 27th, 2007, sitting at Tony's kitchen table, in Seattle.
Updates finished: June 3rd, 2008, in my bedroom.

After six months of being allowed to sit quietly in a drawer maturing, I'm finally starting the process of line-editing and revising Feed, my epic novel of zombies, politics, blogging, how George Romero accidentally saved the world and the tragic duty of the journalist. I forgot how much this book excites me just by existing. I love the setting, I love the characters, and I love the structure of it all.

Now it's time to really get down to brass tacks, and start beating this baby into shape. Even assuming the standard 10% loss between drafts, it's going to remain the longest thing I've ever written -- and quite frankly, I think it's the best.

Alive or dead, the truth won't rest. Rise up while you can.

(*After the additions requested by my first draft proofreading list, this is an increase of 6,802 words. Which is a very amusing number.)

Here go:

Words: 3,120
Total words: 52,260
Reason for stopping: finished chapter twenty.
Music: lots of Death Cab for Cutie.
Lilly: sleeping.

Having weathered the first big boom (which happened in chapter nineteen), I have now accomplished the Recovering From The Big Boom And Planning To Move Forward part of the book. Vitally important, and a place where I frequently tend to stall out. What's more, since I hit chapter, I get to devote the rest of the evening to my current, well-beloved drop-in chapter for Newsflesh. Zombies make everything better!

(Having processed a great many edits on A Local Habitation this morning, it occurs to me that I will go to bed tonight after spending quality time with the fae, a bunch of teenage lycanthropes, and the living dead. There are days when I realize that I am, in fact, living the life I dreamed about when I was in high school.)

This book remains projected at somewhere between 60,000 and 80,000 words for a first draft. I'm starting to think it's going to come down fairly squarely in the 72,000 word neighborhood, which will leave it around 65,000 in the second draft. That's a respectable length, and I'm not going to sneeze at it. Besides, I really like these people. They're fun to hang around with.

Life is good.

Here go:

Words: 4,780
Total words: 49,140
Reason for stopping: finished chapter nineteen.
Music: the mid-80s section of my Lycanthropy play list.
Lilly: trying hard to ignore me, because I made her stop licking the keyboard.

And then we had our FIRST BIG BOOM. Because everybody needs a FIRST BIG BOOM. I have all my primary characters at this point (including the seemingly obligatory Major Character I Didn't Anticipate Being A Major Character), all my guns are on the wall and all my plot points are rather firmly in place, and I'm merrily anticipating the downhill slope from here to the conclusion of the book. It's been somewhat hampered by deadlines -- both self-imposed and external -- on the Toby books, but with the first two of those out of their really heavy lifting phase, I'm finally able to concentrate a little more tightly on Clady.

(And yes, Newsflesh remains high on the priority list. It's just that it's still in that lovely 'settling' phase while I try to figure out where to make the changes that need making, while Clady's story, well...I want to know what happens next!)

The delays have actually been really good for the story, overall; I now know everything that happens in book two (Sit, Stay, I Love You) a lot more intimately than I did, say, six months ago. But wow, do I feel accomplished today!