Since my last post, a lot has happened.

Most important news: this guy showed up:

So naturally he takes up a lot of my time. (He’s so darn cute, how could he NOT?)

On the novel-front, I asked 30 people to become beta readers of my novel’s 3rd draft. Of those, 22 agreed to read it and provide feedback within 45 days.  I extended it to 60 days, with 13 coming through for me with some great feedback.

Draft four took me a month to incorporate some fantastic suggestions and even some copy editing (thanks Gramma!).  Around early June I had completed the 4th draft.

Then it was time to take the biggest step of all: I hired a professional editor.  It cost me a hefty sum, but it was well worth it. I plan to discuss this in more detail in a later post, but suffice it to say it was not entirely what I expected – but that wasn’t a bad thing. I learned a lot.

So there’s no turning back now. I have to sell books to make that editing fee back.

No worries.

Now that I have the edited manuscript back in my hands, I am working on the 5th and final draft of my first novel. At the same time I am learning as much as I can about marketing independent published books while also reading up on Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing and Smashwords publishing.

I hope to release my novel in the early fall. Stay tuned!