Trying it on for Size

Okay, what I talked about doing I have done:

I have combined the 80,000 words of "Considering How to Run" with the 34,000 words of "Their Hearts Run Cold" into one book and will now let it sit for a little while, fermenting, until I decide if that is the route I'm going to go.

I feel good about it, having done it now, at least in one little separate file I can cordon off from everything else while I percolate on it. I know it's going to take some editing to get it into shape, but as I've already edited the first 190 pages of this 270-page work, I'm feeling pretty good about my prospects.

Then I send it off to my ace in the hole. I've got a guy in publishing -- not necessarily a publisher -- who said he'd look it over and give me a bit of advice on where to take it and whether it's good enough to take there.

That's exciting.

What's more exciting is that as I sit and look at this entire file, sitting there like an atom bomb on my computer desktop, I see I've accomplished something.

So, the goals: Have it edited and at least the second draft done by July 1, 2011. From there, I send it to my publishing contact. Then we see what happens.

Then I start researching agents in earnest.

And I start again, from page one, on the next installment of the story. That's probably the scariest part. But then when I consider that this first part, these 114,000 words, took me just over a year to write. I can do that again. It was fun. And in some ways, easy.