Hello again!

Great news: I finished the first draft of 'The Dustmakers'!

It clocked in at a healthy 23,500 words. For reference, that's something in the neighbourhood of 23.5 one thousand word essays, or perhaps 47 five hundred word essays.

It's my third novella, and while it still needs a lot of work, I'm very proud of it.

I love novellas! It's a great length, both to read and to write. It's long enough to draw you in, but not long enough to drag. I almost wish I could do every book as a novella.

The shorter length does mean that every word has to count. I'll have to go through this rough draft with tweezers and a microscope before I let anyone else read it. Hopefully I'll be able to update you on my editing progress soon!

Keep an eye out for future newsletters — I aim to offer beta reading copies some time soon.

What else is new?

I've been working on the outline for book 2 of the Elixir of Power trilogy. The more time I take getting things right now, the less time I'll have to spend editing afterwards. My natural instinct is to make an outline that seems good and just dive right in, but for this one I'm going to deliberately slow myself down and weigh every decision carefully.

What should the opening scene be?

How am I going to keep book 2's story engaging while still bridging the gap between books 1 and 3?

How am I going to make sure I'm consistent with my characters, while also showing how they've grown and changed?

All these questions and more have to be sorted before I write the first scenes.

In the meantime, there are always more books to read. Here are a few for you!

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Thanks for reading

Until next time!