I finished TOPAZ a couple of nights ago. It clocked in at 394 pages and 106,000 words, by far the longest piece I've ever written. It felt really, really good to write those last words. This was the first novel I've written where I wasn't worried it would be too short. The story just kind of kept going...and going...naturally. And it's the first novel I've written that feels like a Big Book. You know. Publishable.

It really is an awesome feeling.

And now I have to do revisions. I have a running list of major items that need to be addressed, so I'll tackle those first. For example, I'm moving the setting of the story to a small city in Canada instead of being in the US. Why? Well, I'm Canadian. Write what you know, and all that. Setting TOPAZ in an imaginary city in the US was an experiment, one that didn't really work for me. Other stuff I need to address includes strengthening the reasoning behind some of the early scenes. I'm a pantser, so I didn't really know what was going on when I wrote some of the first scenes where Faith meets up with Ezekiel and Urim. Now I do. And the list goes on...

After the big stuff, I'll focus on tightening up the writing. And then I think I'll release it into the wild of my beta readers' hands and see what suggestions come forth.

Happy writing, everyone!