It is finished. Ish.

 Book One is finished. Finally.

I think.

I've edited for a thousandth time (just a minor exaggeration), have had beta readers read it more than once -- and have even had the some of the same folks read it again -- have deleted even more words, written up the synopsis, the query letter, and condensed the entire thing into one sentence.

BOOM.

I'm sure there's more to do; there will ALWAYS be things you can tweak and polish. But honestly, I am not sure what else I can do. I am basically beginning to just manipulate sentence structure. Or if this paragraph should be before this one. Or if I should switch "he paused," to before or after a quote. 

Stuff like that indicates that the REAL work is pretty much done. And given how many times I've reworked it... I'm ready for submission.

Now, that said: following the last blog post, James Islington gave me some great feedback and tips on how to self-publish my novel and what to use and what was invaluable and which was superfluous and unhelpful, etc, and I really will take much of what he said into account.

THAT SAID, I really REALLY want to be traditionally published (as every writer does. Duh.), so I have decided to query to the list of agents I have already found (plus one; I might just try to query James Islington's as well), and if none of them are interested, I'll do one more scrounge, and if there are no others that tickle my pickle (ha...), then I'll just go the self-publishing route.

So. THIS IS EXCITING.

Moving forward, most of my efforts will be writing the second book while submitting, querying, and maybe slowly developing interest for Book One.

So... if you have any ideas. Give them to me. I need them.

Until next time, fabulous readers.

Jess