An Obligatory Check In Amongst Literary Purgatory
7-17-25
Greetings all and welcome back to my wonderful blog! I hope you’ve all been having a nice summer so far, and I thank you for checking in on another of my ramblings. It has been a minute since last I updated you all on my comings and goings, so here I am at long last (and to the incessant requests of undoubtedly very many) .
I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned it yet, but I did get back my last completed first draft from an editor—along with hundreds of notes spanning the entire manuscript. I’ve yet to jump into that second draft yet, taking into consideration all of the fantastic criticisms, as I’m still currently toiling away at the final few chapters of my latest book. This newest story shares a single narrative quirk with the draft I just got back from editing, but they are entries in separate series, so I don’t feel like the narrative similarity will matter too much. It’s something that I’ve always loved about the rare story I’ve read or seen that does this, so I’m curious to find out if you can pick up what I’m alluding to once you read the stories for yourselves.
Now, here’s the bad news. This story I’m working on now was supposed to be a publisher’s and agent’s dream manuscript, that crisp, brisk, concise 90k debut author’s romp through a well-constructed and well-described world. And while I believe my story to possess the latter, it already is a few thousand words over 100k, and I’m predicting it needs another few thousand before its finished. If I was to guess, I’d say it might be finished by the end of the month, should my pace maintain at where it is now, which has seen this story from inception to near completion a rapid seven month turn around, by far the fastest I’ve written a draft of this size.
Just a quick check in and check up, after it has been gnawing on me to get back here and bleed out a few paragraphs. I have a lot of plans for the rest of the year and the year following, both with reaching back out to agents, writing, editing, drawing, and of course updating this space here. I find my motivations contained to only specific areas at a time, usually only a single area, so I must express my apologies for being so one-track-minded.
As always, I want to thank you all dear readers again for joining me in the Gatherer’s Bounty and Shifting Memory, and until our next briefing, keep searching the sky wayward Star-Shapers!
JMB
