I reached the end of THE DRAGON MISTRESS on Friday. I discovered, as with the first rewrite / edit of THE CURSED MAN, that was 95% happy with what was there already. I tried switching around some POVs at some point, but realised that they were good the way they already were. In the end, the manuscript for THE DRAGON MISTRESS grew by around 20,000 words. There are still bits and pieces that need filling in, such as a large scale battle towards the end of the book, and some other edits to clarify points. But otherwise the book is shaping up nicely.

I intended to fill in those missing pieces (there are still about 5 or 6 TODO notes in the current manuscript) this weekend, but decided that I needed a break from the book for a couple of months. I'll be returning to THE CURSED MAN after the weekend, and beginning the final readthrough / edit on that, before finally sticking a fork in it. I should be all done by mid-June, I think. After that, I'll be writing the synopsis for both novels, and then starting to process of querying agents. THE DRAGON MISTRESS will still be in the middle of rewrites and edits, but what's there already gives a very strong indication of what the book is all about.

I'm also thinking about attending London Geekfest in August, this year. It will be my first con since about 2012, when I attended FantasyCon in Brighton. It might be nice to meet some agents and publishers in person, before throwing manuscripts their way; the panels and such there would also be a good way of finding out what sort of novels the industry is really pushing for at the moment.

writing  alysha  north-south-divide