Due Dates

My big news for this week is that the masterpiece is done. Late in the day on Thursday, I finished rewrites on the first draft of The Dragonprince’s Heir (The Dragonprince Trilogy, #3).

It’s a good thing I did, because Thursday was my due date for that one. I emailed a copy of it to the three professors on my Master’s Defense Committee: Deborah Chester, J. Madison Davis, and Mel Odom.

Among them, they’ve got hundreds of published novels. They’re going to spend the next ten days reading through it, then on May 3 I’ll complete my Master’s degree by standing in defense of the manuscript. I’ll have to explain the storytelling choices I made, characterization, my publishing plan, all of it.

I’m taking it pretty seriously (I’ve got a lot invested in this program), but I’m not too concerned. I know my stuff, and I’ve really done a good job with this novel. The nice thing about it is that I’ll be getting three hours of detailed feedback from a panel of experts.

I’ll have a month to incorporate their feedback and get a couple rounds of edits from my publishing team before I release it in June.

For those of you just visiting the site to find out where Book Three comes out: That’s good news. We’ve got a complete manuscript a month in advance, so we can definitely get the book out in June.

I’m also excited to have a finished draft so early, because it gives me the chance to offer some Advance Reading Copies again! I’ve had people asking about those at my Facebook page, so I know there’s real interest.

My goal there is to wait until after my defense, process the feedback from my processors (which won’t take more than a week or two), and then send out ARCs in mid-May. Once I’m ready to do that, I’ll announce it pretty loudly here, at Facebook, on Twitter…anywhere you might be listening.

In the meantime, I’ve got another due date pending. The day before my Master’s Defense, I have to turn in 40,000 words for my Writing the Novel class, and I currently have about 15,000 done. The good news: That’ll get me half finished with the Ghost Targets book I was already planning to release in August.

Ah, who am I kidding? It’s all good news. Everything is wonderful. I love being me.