The editing phase of Shadows is done. Tomorrow, my wife and I will start the Read-Out-Loud. With any luck, we’ll finish it by the end of the day. Though I anticipate it’ll take two days. The word count is over 72k total, which is a respectable size for a Daphne book.

If the ROL goes well, then I should be able to clean up last-minute issues and get it published sometime next week. Sunday night would be the earliest. I’m sure my fans would be totally brokenhearted about an early release. I had originally estimated that the book would not be ready until the end of July or the first week of August, but the editing phase went much faster than I expected.

Of course, I’ll make an announcement here when it’s published and send out a newsletter. After this book is released, I still won’t have a commitment to what book I’ll write next. I’m gathering notes and ideas for The Robot Whisperer. Currently, it’s essentially just a piece of clay with its edges rubbed off. I’m trying to form the characters that will be essential for the entire series. They need a compelling backstory so they’ll be interesting characters. I have some rough ideas, but I need to refine them a bit to make sure these characters clash with each other and don’t turn into Mary Sues. This is the first time I’ve started a new series from scratch in some time. Other than the Q Mystery series (which is a cozy mystery collection of books written under my pen name, Elliot Droit). Now that I have a bunch of experience with book writing and what sells, I have all these ideas about how I need to start a new series. It’s still a risk, so I’ll publish the first book and see what kind of reception it gets before I fully commit to a series of them. Fortunately, it’s a chronicle, so there’s no pressure to write a certain number of books.