Another week and more work on the the fantasy mystery series. The biggest news:

Boom! I finished the first draft of Book 3 today.

Book 1 – Justicar Jhee and the Cursed Abbey

More editing and I need to figure out a more systematic way to do this. I can’t really seem to figure out non-linear or big picture editing and always devolve into tinkering with phrasing and typos. With the Book 3 first draft done, it’s time to buckle down and do more than minimal editing (and get rid of those last placeholder names).

Random excerpt:

“I scandalized or offended you. Don’t mind me. One of the privileges of getting older is no longer concerning yourself with trivia, niceties, or conventions. Those are young woman’s cares and a thing of court. I live a much simpler life here.”

Book 2 – Justicar Jhee and the Gray Galleon

Yeah, right.

Excerpt:

“You three have been bailed out and are free to go.” She started to protest. “Arrangements are being made for the other protesters as we speak. Now get out of my jail!”

Book 3 – “The Missing MacGuffin”

1st draft of Book 3

76,658 / 72,000 words. 106% done!

While the final word count came in at ~76.6K, that’s with author notes, brainstorming, and alternate or extraneous text. (I’m looking at you, ‘but’, ‘just’, ‘so’, ‘that’, and any sentence I began with ‘and’.) It still feels like I have a lot less cruft than I did with the previous first drafts, though. Because of that, removing the excess shouldn’t shrink the draft too much. I, also, think it will be balanced out by the scenes I cut short and missing descriptions. Snippets, I set aside rather than place them out of order in the draft. Especially snippets. Those along with their transitions up the word count most of all. I misplaced the odd scene here and there but, overall I kept things in order. But, we shall see come editing time.

Have a lovely day!