June Update - EMPATHY: Imminent Dawn

The first book in the five-book EMPATHY series, Imminent Dawn, doesn't debut until January 28th of 2019, but the last few months have been spent doing a great deal to set the series up for success once it's available.

What has that work entailed? Read on to find out!

Drafting

With the second book in the series, Mourning Dove, tentatively scheduled for release in April 2019, I've been hustling to write a first draft of it in the background. As of last week, I can say that I finally have a complete draft put together!

I ran the numbers, and over the course of 80 days, I outlined, wrote, and completed a draft that currently sits at 86,126 words. Though I'm eager to hop back into it and start tidying up things like consistency in character motivation and bringing greater depth to the details of the world, I've found it's good practice to let drafts sit for a few weeks between rounds of revisions in order to give oneself a more clear perspective on the work once returning to it.

So what will I do in the meantime? My editor's deadlines play into that a bit, which we'll explore below.

Deadlines

I'm extremely fortunate to have a flexible editor, one who understands that writing a series of this scope on this kind of schedule requires a great deal of, well, flexibility.

Though I technically turned in my "final" version of Imminent Dawn earlier this year, recent feedback from critique partners on the manuscript's ending had me wanting to rewrite a few of the novel's closing chapters. With that in mind, I approached my editor about the ability to do so, and, to my elation, he gave me the go-ahead to make those changes.

Not only that, but he gave me until August to make them! This is great news not only in terms of the time I'll now have to work on those revisions, but it will also free me up to introduce or emphasize some different threads in that manuscript that will prove more relevant based on their inclusion in the sequel as well, the first draft of which is due to my editor by September.

Editing Schedule

Even with that in mind, I'm still pursuing a more aggressive editing schedule. It's my goal to have the Imminent Dawn revisions complete by the end of June so that I can focus on Mourning Dove edits and re-writes in July. Ideally, I'll have both manuscripts to my editor before August begins.

All of this coupled with my wedding in August is certain to make for a busy summer, but it's one that I feel will be busy in all the right ways!