Total words: 102,828.
Chapters: Twenty-three, plus prologue and epilogue.
Pages: 354.

Reason for stopping: draft one is finished.
Music: my interview on SF Signal.
The cats: Lilly, floor; Alice, floor; Thomas, bed.

Did somebody get the number of that truck?

And once again: there you go. Draft one is done, and sent off to the Machete Squad for attack. I'm going to have edits. I'm going to have structural revisions. I think I may need to swap the epilogue out for something a little tighter (although wow am I close to the text right now, so hell if I know). I'm going to be working on this book for months to come. You know what? I'm feeling pretty good about that. Because the first Alex Price adventure is finished, and he pretty much rules.

I am exhausted and I feel sort of beaten, but the draft is done. Tonight, I will drink deep from the keg of victory. BRING ME THE FINEST MUFFINS AND BAGELS IN THE LAND!

Draft!

Total words: 122,700.
Chapters: Thirty-one.
Pages: 412.

Reason for stopping: draft one is finished.
Music: Delta Rae.
The cats: Lilly, bed; Alice, unknown; Thomas, bed.

Did somebody get the number of that truck?

Well, there you go. Draft one is done. I have edits to process, corrections to make, structural elements to adjust, and lots and lots of trimming to do—the book is currently somewhere between five and eight thousand words longer than it needs to be, the length of a short story, if you wanted to write a short story made up mostly of "just," "that," and assorted wishy-washy modifiers. But the words are on the page to be mucked about with. The first draft is finished.

I am exhausted and I feel sort of beaten, but the draft is done. Tonight, I will drink deep from the keg of victory. BRING ME THE FINEST MUFFINS AND BAGELS IN THE LAND!

Draft!

Current stats:

Words: 8,464.
Total words: 101,114.
Reason for stopping: I sort of, well, ran out of book.
Music: lots of things, mostly Dave and Tracy.
Lilly, Alice, and Thomas: bed, orange cat tree, and beige cat tree, respectively.

First draft stats:

Pages: 347
Chapters: twenty-five, plus a prologue and an epilogue
Started: November 2, 2010
Finished: February 18, 2012

So it turns out that finishing a Toby book and a Mira Grant book and doing lots of conventions and writing another Toby book and a couple of Mira Grant novellas and not sleeping makes me slow. Which is why this book took fifteen months to write (the first one took fourteen months, and I swore that this one would go faster). And yet. I am done with the first draft of Midnight Blue-Light Special, and Discount Armageddon is not yet on shelves, and that means I win.

I am so tired. I am physically and emotionally exhausted, and my eyes hurt because I cried through the last two chapters. But I am done. I am finished.

I will deal with a few pending edits and send the first draft to the Machete Squad tomorrow. But for right now? I sleep.

For right now, I win.

Words: 113,490.
Pages: 380.
Chapters: 26.

Reason for stopping: draft two is finished.
Music: a lot of fan mixes, actually.
The cats: Lilly, in my tank top drawer; Alice, on the orange cat tree; Thomas, occupying half the bed.

And there we are; draft two is finished, roughly a month after draft one was put solidly to bed. All the edits have been processed, many words have been trimmed, many logic puzzles have been solved, and many more surely remain. The trimmed-down, slimmed-down manuscript is off to The Agent, who will savage it with sharp, sharp teeth and cruel, cruel claws, and it will be a better book as a consequence.

Next up, The Chimes at Midnight, which stands a good chance of losing the "The" before it ever sees print. But we shall see, won't we?

Words: 15,820.
Total words: 116,181.

Reason for stopping: draft one is finished.
Music: lots of Counting Crows and modern folk.
The cats: Lilly, in my tank top drawer; Alice, on the cat tree; Thomas, occupying half the kitchen floor.

There we are, then; draft one is done.

I have edits to process, corrections to make, structural elements to adjust, and lots and lots of trimming to do—the book is currently somewhere between five and eight thousand words longer than it needs to be, the length of a short story, if you wanted to write a short story made up mostly of "just," "that," and assorted wishy-washy modifiers. But the words are on the page to be mucked about with. The first draft is finished.

I am so relieved. I will spend the weekend in Ohio working on the page proofs for Blackout, and attach Ashes of Honor with renewed vigor when I return. (Oh, who am I kidding. I'll be editing this puppy all weekend. But I'll also be getting ready to write something new.)

Life is good.

Date started: September 14th, 2010.
Date finished: July 10th, 2011.

Total words: 165,481.
Total pages: 605.
Total chapters: Forty.

Well, that's that. It's done. Three books. More than three years. My first finished series. And while this is only the first draft, it will go quickly through the next few cycles, becoming a finished book in the time it takes to blink. And then it will be over.

Mira Grant was born after this series. Newsflesh became Feed; a standalone became a trilogy; "that zombie novel Seanan keeps threatening to write" became the book that would get me nominated for a Hugo award. The Masons and their friends and their enemies and the science and the politics and the zombies, it all became...

It became...

It became so much bigger than I ever dreamed it was going to become. I am so grateful. I am so sad that it's over.

Alive or dead, the truth won't rest.

Rise up while you can.

So a long, long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, in an era before I could explain the epidemiology of the Black Death or tell you gleefully about fluke parasitism...I outlined the first five adventures of a changeling named October Daye. Yeah, I've been working on this series for a while now.

Anyway, all five of the books have gone through dramatic changes since they were originally outlined. The later books especially, because every change to an early book sort of cascades through the continuity to land on their heads. Which brings us to book five, which you may have heard me refer to as The Brightest Fell. See, when that title was chosen, it made perfect sense. It was a good title. And then the book began to warp and struggle with its outline, and the title became a little less good.

And then I redid the outline for the last third of the book, and the title sucked. What's a girl to do?

Rename the book, of course.

Book five is now called One Salt Sea, which is in many ways a much, much better title for this book, and a much better indicator of what's going on between the covers. Book seven, assuming we get that far (dream big, shop smart, shop S-Mart), will be called The Brightest Fell. Because, y'know, this wasn't confusing enough.

Titles make my head hurt. Time to go and pack for my trip to New York.

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!

I have sign-off! Yes! Toby Daye, book three, An Artificial Night, is ready to ride the bullet train to my publisher's desk! (Note that this doesn't actually mean the book is in its final form, since DAW has the right to request changes and edits -- I made changes and edits to Rosemary and Rue after it had been turned in -- but I become a much happier bunny after it's slammed down on my editor's virtual desk.)

Final book stats:

111,304 words.
377 pages.
Twenty-three chapters.

The best part about finishing the finishing of a book (since even the finishing process can take several shots) is falling in love with it again. The revision process is sort of like cleaning a really messy house. When you're doing the heavy lifting, you pretty much hate the place and want to burn it down with a flamethrower. But when you're just going through the pretty, pristine rooms, wiping up those last smears of dust and straightening those last few books, well...

It's wonderful, because it's yours.

This book is wonderful because it's mine. Also because it's just a pretty rockin' book, all full of adventure and excitement and actual pie (and Toby being so very, very Toby that it hurts). And I have sign-off.

YAY.

(I don't have a Late Eclipses of the Sun icon yet, so you're getting my Rosemary and Rue icon, instead. Oh, the humanity.)

So last night, I finished some fairly serious surgical adjustments to the end of Late Eclipses of the Sun, the fourth book in the Chronicles of October Daye. I also processed a huge whacking stack of edits from Brooke, who once again waded into the alligator pond with machete swinging, whistling a happy song. I love my editors so very much sometimes. Most of the time, actually. They're just fabulous people.

An Artificial Night is still with my agent, who's reading it over so that she can suggest any changes before I turn it in to my editor. We figure turning in the first two books of the trilogy six months ahead of deadline means I can be a little more leisurely with book three (and besides, my due date is still more than a year away). Someone asked me yesterday if I was planning to have the entire second trilogy finished by the time the second book came out, and I just looked at them blankly. Of course I do. Duh.

This is the part in revising a book where I really start to fall in love with it again. We haven't found and fixed all the flaws, obviously, or it wouldn't still be in revisions, but most of the major structural damage has been resolved. The porch has been torn down and replaced with something sturdier, we've had the landscapers come in and do the garden, and the plumbing has stopped making that weird clanking noise. It becomes a little bit more like a book with every day that passes.

I'm excited. Because this is made of awesome.

Today, I begin doing the major surgical adjustments to A Local Habitation. This is, honestly, one of my favorite parts of the writing process. The book is done -- for certain values of 'done' -- and I can see the entire shape of it, all stretched out upon my screen like a patient etherized upon a table. Now I can start determining which of its major organs it really doesn't need, which ones can be easily extracted, and which ones need a little more beefing up. It's a really rewarding period in the evolution of the text.

I managed to get some work done on Lycanthropy yesterday -- not as much as I would have done on, say, a day when I wasn't down with Martian death flu, but since I'm sick, and a next-day review of the text has shown it to be pretty darn good, I'm a happy girl. Clady is just plain fun to write for. I can't wait until everyone else gets to meet her.

Also on the happy-happy joy-joy side of things, when I finish the surgical adjustments to A Local Habitation and send it off, I should be able to take a month or so off from playing in Toby's backyard to address the changes I've been wanting to make in Newsflesh. Because everything is better with zombies. Even chocolate chip cookies. And since I have steadfastly refused to allow my love for the living dead to insert them into any of my other ongoing series (except for Deathless, but that's a special case, given my protagonist), I figure I deserve a little bit of a zombie break. ZOMBIE BREAK!!!!!

Life is good. There's so much writing to be done!

My first trilogy has been purchased by DAW Books! This set of urban fantasy/mysteries is best described as 'fairy tale noir', and will be coming soon to a world near you. The order is:

Rosemary and Rue
A Local Habitation
An Artificial Night

I am grateful, excited, delighted, and really looking forward to the full-contact editing bonanza that's sure to be coming my way. There's nothing more exciting than a red pen, a machete, and a whole manuscript to explore. So this is the beginning of the process. Now, we make our hack-and-slash way to the end!

Yay!