…and I’m calling this a completed draft.

Specifically, a completed first draft of Hepen the Watcher, the sequel to The Dread Hammer, which I started writing on May 1st.

Right now the draft is an untidy, 74,000-word mess, but it’s a story, with a beginning, a tumultuous middle, and a pretty decent end. There’s a lot to do in round 2, but not tonight.

Writing binges–twelve or thirteen hours in a row of working on a manuscript–are rare for me. I don’t usually have that level of endurance and, well, people in your family expect you to, you know, pay attention to them.

But I had one of those days yesterday. The husband was in Honolulu and the son brought home Subway sandwiches, so I was able to work from maybe 1pm to 1:30am on the novel-in-progress. (Of course, I’m in that lucky situation where I don’t have to get up early for a job or to take care of small kids.) Anyway, it was a lot of fun, and I’m much, much closer to the end of this draft.

Speaking of which, I’d better get back to work on it.