We’re close, people. Just hit full-novel word count and feeling the groove. Lots of fun parts to write still, but the key word here is fun. A lot of the hard stuff is in the rearview.

I’m not gonna finish this book in December. January is within reach. February seems a certainty unless I’ve really miscalculated how many words I’m going to need for the final stretch. (This has happened before, so I’m not ruling it out. I thought Sophistication would be wrapped in 90,000 words and it took me 130,000 to get there.)

Still, I have some small measure of confidence in my ability to finish up soonish. Already started to spin up talks about the audiobook version. Will reach out shortly to my go-to copy editor. And I’ve got a list of about 10 agents / publishers with whom I’ve developed something of a rapport over the last couple years, all of whom will get the manuscript.

I’ve come so close to representation and publishing deals with my first two books that I could taste it. Would be lovely if the third time is the charm. But if not, no big. I ultimately write books because I fucking love writing books. Everything else is gravy.

More soon.