I had a lunch with Daniel yesterday wherein we solved all the problems Bloodshifted might ever ever have! (Not that I won’t find new ones, or other ways to run ashore — but the decks are clear for now ;))
I reworked the first ten k a lot after him reading what I had prior, and me getting to the end of Deadshifted so I could get the tone straight, and now I’m at cruising altitude. I’m trying to do 2500 words a day because that would be straight up awesome if I could. Blue Heaven’s coming up here, so there’s a chance I really could maintain that for the whole month. I asked for, and got, a 30 day extension after my “yo, I can’t do math” giving myself five months for this book — I feel very good about getting it in by 7/15 now, but it’d be so cool if I could get it done earlier. Plus it’s a good idea to buy myself some extra time for later anyhow, I still have copyedits on Deadshifted to do, plus Shapeshifted’s release, plus New Project 1 and New Project 2. Not to mention how nice it would be to stay on track to do another Edie book by the end of the year (it goes out to nine books. And then I swear I’m done. Done done done.) Taking longer only really steals time from myself, since I’ve already got so much to do. I try to think about it like that, and sometimes it even helps :P.
Everything feels much more smooth now though after talking it out ahead of time. Daniel always knows how to focus in on the parts that are going to be troublesome, and steer me out of my own self-made quicksand. He also doesn’t let me get away with cheats or easy stuff.
What’s nice is this book I get to bring in a lot of old characters that I haven’t gotten to play with in several books. I can’t wait for the mayhem, honestly, it’s so nice to have all of that to look forward to. Since you all are two books behind me you haven’t realized the extent to which I love the whole “everything crazy happening all at once!” endings…but this one is going to Take the Cake. Until the next one, of course ;).
Now to some how get to sleep in time for my tattoo action tomorrow :D