1920s cocktails

I have taken a break on revisions lately to do some more research -- more on that later.  But as part of this, I decided to try out some 1920s drinks and figure out a favorite drink for my main character, Ruby.  In my rough drafts I have her ordering gin and tonics all the time, but I knew I wanted her to be drinking something with a little more pizzazz.

Revising again

It took until Saturday (instead of just Friday), but I finally did finish that last scene, finishing the first draft for once and for all.  Now I'm revising again -- not the third novel (the one I just finished), but the first one.  (The second installment, if you will remember, is a novella I realized I had room for between Pandora's Box and the one I just finished, the title of which I have yet to release.)

Finally -- progress!

On Wednesday I added nearly a thousand words to my novel, finishing the "missing chapter" and bringing my total word count to 102,193 (I've also updated the progress bar in the sidebar).  It was a nice feeling after not working on the novel for so long, and means that I am almost ready to start my major revisions and rewriting for Pandora's Box (I want to get this done before Camp NaNoWriMo starts in April).

More NaNoWriMo to keep me going

When I say in my sidebar that my novels are powered by NaNoWriMo, I'm not kidding!  I wrote the bulk of the first novel during NaNo 2011, the next (now the third) during Camp NaNoWriMo 2012 and NaNo 2012, and I will be writing the second installment in the series, which I believe will be a novella, during Camp NaNo in April and perhaps July (depending on what I get done in April).

Missing pieces

Besides finally straightening out the timeline (mostly -- still a few more dates to assign in that department), last week I also finally got to work on the missing chapter -- the one I skipped over by accident, assuming it was going to happen a little further on... and then realizing that what I had just written actually occurred after that chapter.

And this is why I hadn't done the timeline yet -- sometimes it rearranges itself while I'm writing, and I have to go back later on and nail down the dates once I've written the draft.

An ending and finalizing the timeline

This is two weeks overdue, but I updated the progress meter in the sidebar with the most recent word count.  I put an ending on the novel two weeks ago today, which is HUGE news.  I wrote 3,400 words that day -- almost 2,000 at a NaNoWriMo-style write-in I attended with a friend, and then when I got home I just kept going until I reached the end.  I knew I was close, and didn't want to leave it undone at that point.  So I finished it.

No loose ends and minding the details

I just updated the progress meter in the sidebar to reflect my current word count of 94,172.  I was thinking that my rough draft of Book 3 would be just shy of the initial goal of 100k (kind of like the rough draft of Pandora's Box was just shy of the initial goal of 80k), but now I'm thinking it will be a little over.  How much over I don't know -- I think I have 6k to go until the end, easily, but then I also have to go back and fill in a chapter that I missed earlier on.