First draft of 'Target of Corruption' has been completed!

I've just had a sprint to the finish on 'Target Of Corruption,' hitting 107,000 words yesterday to cap off the epilogue. I wrote almost 10,000 words in the last 4 days, which was a bit of a marathon, but I was so close, I wanted to see it done!

Projects have this curious tendency to have several stages: at the start, a burst of productivity because the project is new, then a lull happens when you're about 1/3 of the way done, which you have to push to get through. After that, it's just steady progress until you get close to the end, where it becomes a slog and you just want it to be done.

This can either be demotivating, or extremely motivating. In this case, it was the latter, and I pushed through, getting it complete before I had anticipated.

So what does this mean for the future? Well, it's good and bad news, as 107K will take an extremely long time to edit. I'm guessing that this novel won't be released until the back half of June, at the earliest, which is a bummer. I'll see what I can do to get through it faster, but no promises! I want to do a good job with it.

In the meantime, I've started the prep work for the next project, which I'm going to start writing today. I've looked through the various options, and have decided to pick up an outline for a story that I put together over the Christmas break:

Bull Moon - "Two women get involved with the Bull/Minotaur demon, Hygraxus, who slowly corrupts them into his demonic milking cows."

This story has a limited number of scenes, so I'm hoping I can get through it faster than 'Target Of Corruption.'

Depositphotos has added a new feature that allows you to remove the background from most stock photos before you download them, which has saved me a tremendous amount of time in creating story covers over the last few I've made.

That being the case, I've already put together a prototype cover for 'Bull Moon', but I'm going to hold onto it until I get closer to release. I'm hoping that story will be somewhere below novella length, but I tend to write long, so we'll see!

I also have a tremendous amount of other ideas kicking around, one titled 'Droneship', which turned into a long outline that appears to be novel length. I created a cover for it, but I don't expect I'll be able to pick that one up until later this year.

It should be another good year for writing!

Mid May Update

Time for another update!

I don't really have all that much to report at the moment. Progress continues apace on 'Target of Corruption', and I am continuing to meet my writing goal each day.

The novel has grown to ~82,000 words, and I am currently in the middle of writing the finale. This final mighty battle will decide the fate of all the characters, and I want to get it right!

Once this scene is complete, all I have left is the epilogue, which I've already written a short section of  (I had some good ideas, so I skipped ahead a bit to give it a kickstart).

It's growing larger than I had anticipated, but to say that I didn't guess that this might happen wouldn't be truthful of me. This always happens.

A very rough estimate is that it'll take about another 10K words to complete (10 days), so realistically, the novel isn't going to come out until next month. Bummer.

On the other hand, I am pleased to say that I've finished working with the artist I commissioned, and the cover is now complete. I will reveal it at release, as this time I don't want to give anything away too soon. The art is quite good, so I hope you'll look forward to it!

The path is clear, all I must do now is execute! Hopefully by the time I write the next update, I'll have the novel done and posted for all to enjoy!