I finished typing up the first draft of “The Guardian Hound” Monday, I believe. I’ve moved on to doing a final fix and heavy polish. I must power through three chapters every day in order to be finished by the 31st. That means between 3-6 hours every night of concentrated, hard work.

Ugh.

But I’m really pleased with this novel. I’m happy that I’m taking the time to read it all out loud before I pass it along to my first readers. I know I’m doing good work with this polish, and fixing a bunch of things.

My brain is already thinking about what’s next. I’ll have about 2 1/2 weeks after I finish the novel before comments come back. I’m going to try to write two short stories in that time.

Then the novel comes back for a couple of weeks, I fix things, and it goes off to the copy editor May 6th.

I’m figuring at that point, it’s time to start another novel.

The next novel I want to work on is “Siren’s Call” — the one set in New Orleans. It’s time to write that novel and finish it. I’m kind of excited about it — I know exactly how the novel is supposed to go, what’s supposed to happen. I just need to write the dang thing.