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It’s done.
Actually… It’s been done for a while. I finished the first draft of The First Sin on August 26, 2023! That’s four years, nine months, and six days to write. Incredible. I did feel a bit like Frodo when I realized I could finally write “The End”.
TFS weighed in initially at 140,023 words, making it slightly longer than Tolkien’s The Return of the King, but not quite as long as King’s Pet Sematary, though subsequent tweaks to the document increased the word count by a few hundred more words. Whew!
I let the draft rest after that while I waited for my alpha readers and critique partners to finish reading it and give me their feedback. On October 9, 2023 I compiled everything I’d received to date. 2,226 words worth of notes! Some were my own but a lot came from my readers, which is fantastic. I started revising the novel shortly after that and am about halfway through now. I hope to be done by the end of October. When the revisions are done, I’ll be ready for beta readers!
More exciting news…!
On August 30, 2023 I started writing Sin Beyond Redemption, which is the second book in the AOS series. That’s what’s kept me busy while I left TFS to rest. So far I’m 7,423 words into SBR’s first draft. Like with TFS, the first three chapters of SBR are going to be available for free on the website. Chapters One and Two are already up!
As time goes on and more content becomes available for SBR, the website will slowly start to encapsulate information about both books, so keep an eye out for that.
Onward!