All done but the editing

This weekend I wrapped up the first draft of Wolfbreed 2.  We have it clocking in at about 84K which explains finishing about a week ahead of schedule.  This doesn’t mean that the book’ll end up that short.  Inevitably my revisions end up long.  (Even Raven, where I cut 30K from the original draft still ended up about 10K longer in the final.)  Also, I’m evolving as a novelist, since when I started this, 80K seemed just about right.  That’s the length of the first three, as well as everything I wrote up to around 1999 with the exception of the Hostile Takeover Trilogy. Now 80K seems barely adequate, though that might have something to do with the complexity and the number of POV characters I’m using nowadays.

I’ve sent the draft on to the Hamsters and my agent looking for first-reader feedback on the revision, which I promised to get in to Spectra by the end of June.

Best of all, we have a title.  For those of you who’ve noticed my perennial title difficulties, this is a big deal.  And the title of Wolfbreeed 2 is <drumroll> Wolf’s Cross.