For every story there is...well, a story. My latest novel, "Useful Pieces", due out this summer, began in November, 2019. As some of you may know, November is NaNoWriMo month - National Novel Writing Month. I like a challenge so I did it. For the entire month. The goal was to write over 50,000 words in November and at the end, you would have a novel. Certainly a novel that would need editing but at least a novel. Good way to confirm to ourselves that we can complete something in that short of a time. If you calculated it out, you would have to write more than 1000 words a day, or more precisely, 1,667 words a day. And I did it. It felt great to complete a novel in that time. And no, I would not do it again!
So, you may be wondering, where is it? That was 2019. Why did it take so long to complete, meaning editing it and getting it published? What I did with it was, I put it on the back burner. When I was looking at all the books I've started writing this one jumped out at me. As I make progress on the many books I have started, I also write down the number of words. This novel was far ahead of all the others. So, sometime in late 2023, I dusted off the cobwebs and re-read the entire novel, making changes along the way. One of the reasons I put it aside was I was considering completely changing the ending which would have meant changing the entire story and would involve a lot of changes. Almost like writing an entirely new novel. But when I re-read it, I liked it and decided to go with it. I put the book in my publisher's file for his changes in February 2024, and waited. And waited. Then 2024 was over and it was one year later, February 2025 and the book still had not been edited. Finally, after much harrassing (from me) my publisher and I sat down and we began the editing process in May, 2025. Now we are getting close to the end of the editing with the next step sending for galley copies. After that, with another complete read through, it will be available for purchase. And, of course, a celebration!