Whew. Last few days have been kind of unpleasant – I’ve been fighting some kind of sore-throat-and-intestinal-crud combination that’s kept me home from the office.

On the other hand, in the few hours here and there that I’ve been awake and lucid, I’ve managed to finish polishing up the existing partial draft of The Curse of Steel. That includes a few kilowords of new material that wasn’t in the very first rough draft. Those sixteen chapters are all up on Chapterbuzz now, so if you’re interested in a bit of gritty Iron Age heroic fantasy, go have a read, “buzz” and comment on the chapters.

Plan now is to take a break for a few days. Honestly, I need to get back to the office, assuming this crud is finally gone, and put in some long hours on a couple of projects there. Not to mention that I’m starting my first course toward a graduate degree next week too.

Come the beginning of October, I’ll be participating in a challenge on Chapterbuzz that will involve cranking out 10 kilowords (about four chapters) in the first week, and then polishing and refining and adding to the draft over the rest of the month. Then November comes, and National Novel Writing Month – 50 kilowords in one month. If I can keep up the pace, the novel should be finished in the first draft well before the end of the calendar year. Here’s hoping.