Good news, the rough draft of Circle of Ashes is done! It ended up at about 183,000 words when I completed the draft… and as of now, when I’ve edited about… 1/3 or so, I’ve managed to cut it down to below 180,000 so far. Just lots of restructuring of sentences, removing redundant lines, and all of that. I also suddenly had a particular writing rule I’ve struggled with for ages finally click, which has allowed me to remove a lot of dialogue tags (asked, said, replied, and so forth).

So far my alpha readers have adored the story as a whole, so I’m relieved in that way. I’ve also set up time with the editor while I’m on my trip, so I just need to get my part done first so I don’t have anything to worry about while I’m out.

As a reminder, the audiobook of Talyn: Blooming is scheduled for release on November 4th, so that will be coming out soon.

Turning to future plans, they haven’t changed. Next on my list is returning to Evelyn and Eve of Destruction. I’ll do that after returning from my trip, and then… well, we’ll see once that book is closer to the end. I’m not sure what I want to do yet, and I don’t want to lock myself in.

Anyway, that’s it! Have a great week, everyone! I’ll try to get a pre-order for Circle of Ashes up this week.