Welcome back to waking up, putting on clothes, and going to work! It's Monday and I hope the turkey has digested well.

I finally finished edits on this draft of the third novel. I've been working on parts I and II in separate files, and over the weekend, I finally fused them together into a whole for the first time (evidence). I kept peeking at pages and finding new mistakes, but at least there's nothing to make me cringe (that's a crucial test. It takes a while to get it to the point where I've excised all the stuff I don't like).

It came out to 359 pages, believe it or not. Appox. 90,000 words.

There's still plenty of work ahead, but it's a great relief to have finished a draft after thinking about it for years and tinkering with it for many years more. The germ has germinated.

Next step: My lit agent will look at it, let me know what she thinks is worth changing and worth keeping, and I will go from there. I have a sense of what parts need work, but I didn't want to change anything else without professional wisdom, lest I cut out the best parts due to overediting.

Oh, the Giants lost, but we enjoyed going to the game anyhow. (That's American football, for European readers.)

And to the guy who complained about blogs: I don't think 1/2 of the world cares about this!!!