All right, guys. Time for a status update.

First of all, it’s a good thing I got 20,000 words written last week, because I had more shifts than normal at my other job this week, and that’s made this week quite a bit slower. In the end, I guess it balances out at neutral, aiming somewhere slightly north of 10k per week. Which is a lot less than my old, pre-second job standard, but still functional.

However, the slow but steady rate still pays dividends. Shadow of an Empire has passed 200,000 words, and is in its final chapters! Which means that my estimates of it being around 225k or so were pretty on spot. For the record, that’ll be about 700 pages of reading.

Now, I’m sure some of you have wondered where news of Colony has gone. Well, it’s been in its second alpha for some time now, the alpha readers slowly picking through it while I’ve been working on Shadow. But once Shadow is done and into its first alpha … all of my attention is going to shift to Colony. The time I’ve spent on Shadow gave the alpha readers plenty of time to summarize and read through Colony‘s 1200 or so page bulk, so it’ll be time to return to its watery pages and revise, rewrite, and edit. I’m hoping there won’t be a need for a third alpha, but with a book this large …

From there, it’s on to Beta status for Colony. Beta 1, 2, and then the final pre-read and the creation of the cover. So maybe August? I’d like it to be out this summer. Taking a second job has slowed me down, but I need to get this book out at long last.

From there, I’m not going to dawdle on Shadow of an Empire. Once Colony is out the door, it’s going into alpha and beta before I start working on Jungle.

And in between, I’ve even got some ideas for some smaller, fanfiction-related stuff to write up.

It’s going to be a busy summer.

Anyway, that’s the update. I’m out!