I'm moving into the final draft stage of Deadly Potential (by which I mean the final draft before I'll let someone else start reading it, there's going to still be lots of revisions on it). When I begin working on a manuscript, I only have a very rough idea of where everything is going to go. I used to have a detailed outline, but often two-thirds of it would get tossed as I found more promising ideas. So now I start with five or six key plot points or scenes that I know I want to hit, and I only outline for the next few chapters. Gradually I build up the story until things start to get shaky, then I prune it back and move forward.
I've done two major prunings so far on Deadly Potential and now I'm far enough along that it was time to map out the entire thing. So I made detailed notes on what had been written, what subplots I want to keep (and which I want to toss), and then came up with a detailed chapter-by-chapter outline of the entire book. I'll be able to keep about 70-80% of what I've written, but it's not going to be in the same order and location as before. I'm effectively starting at the beginning but I should still be able to get everything done before RWA Nationals in July.
The chapter by chapter author commentary for Judgment is done and I'll be putting that up either today or tomorrow.
And I'm excited to be getting everything ready for Limestone Genre Expo this weekend. I've got a lot of good panels and a book launch for Judgment (there will be cookies and I thought I'd open it up for an informal Q&A). My print copies have shipped from Createspace, so hopefully they will get here before Friday. I'm getting really excited about getting to share it with everyone.
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