I am thrilled and nervous as all hell to report, O Internets, that the sixth (and hopefully final, at least for a while) draft of Lament of the Dove has now been sent off to Carina Press!
The word count as of the completion of this draft stands at roughly 112,300. I actually yanked about 13K when I did the word count reduction pass in Draft Five, but about 7K came back with the new content that went into Draft Six. So the net word count reduction came in at about 6,100–at the very bottom edge of the range that Carina’s editor requested! Whew!
Between the change requests I got from their editor and the excellent feedback from this last round of beta reading, Lament is now a much, much stronger book. And even if Carina says no, I’ll be happy to send this book out to consideration elsewhere. For now, the plan is to let Lament sit with Carina until I hear back from them, and turn attention over to finishing up Bone Walker and getting its Kickstarter going!
Today is a good day indeed.
