I finished a draft yesterday, the longest book I’ve written in a long time. It’s going to take a lot of rewriting because I felt like I narrowed in on what the story was really about as I went along, and now I need to go back and adjust the rest of the book to fit.

I ended up veering sharply from the original outline. A major character I spent a lot of time developing never showed up at all. He may make it into a later book as a complication, but I may cut discussion about him from this book. The event that was going to be the midpoint ended up being the climax. The midpoint ended up being something I hadn’t expected. The planned ending got moved to a later book because it got rid of a character I realized was the main villain and I decided we needed to keep him around to be a pain before we get rid of him.

I’m really looking forward to going back and doing revisions on this because I love playing in this world and I want to see what I can do in revision to make the book what it should be. But for now it needs to rest and I have a lot of other things I want to work on. I need to proofread the next Rydding Village book to get it ready for publication, and I’d like to draft another one. I also have a lot of marketing work to get done.

But I may ease up a bit on work because next week is the big local classical music festival and I’m ushering for a few concerts. I have some projects I want to finish around the house and, weather permitting, the yard. I’m going to try to relax for a couple of days. I’m meeting a friend for lunch Saturday and I’ve got a concert Sunday afternoon. That should be a good break for the brain, though my mind already has a couple of new story ideas brewing.