September 26, 2011

… well sort of. It’s 10.30pm and the first draft is finished. The final third has been written in five mad days of more-or-less non-stop writing. It’ll need editing and rewriting and so on but actually having a working draft is just brilliant.

It’s a little bit different to the other three but I don’t want to give too much away. There’s a lot of Jessica in it.

It’s roughly the same length as Locked In, which means it’s a tiny bit shorter than Vigilante. Book 3: The Woman In Black, which is at second-draft stage, is quite a bit longer than all of the other three.

For word-count fans, I’ll give you this:
Locked In: 98,200
Vigilante: 99,500
The Woman In Black: 108,500 (second draft)
Think Of The Children: 96,000 (first draft)

As you can see, there isn’t much between books 1, 2 and 4. When I was around halfway through writing Book 4, I knew it was going to be slightly shorter. I figured I could either fill the middle section with waffle, or just be honest with it. It still needs an edit and bits will go in and come out.

At some point in the not too distant future, I hope people will be able to enjoy it.