DONE!

For reasons which will be become clear in a moment, I am not feeling very wordy today. So I shall keep this plain and put it into a series of bullet points, all with exclamation marks:

• The manuscript is complete!
• Sent it to the publisher last week!
• They’re about half-way through and said they like it!

Hmmm. Okay, maybe I need to go with the wordier version!

After 18 months, I have finally finished the manuscript to The Cronian Incident. And after about a week, they wrote to me to tell me that they were half done and they were enjoying it. Naturally, they were sure to note that there were some flaws and some things that needed fixing, but nothing major. In other words, it will need polishing, but they see no reason NOT to publish it at this time! 🙂

This moment has certainly been a long time in coming! And in all honesty, I felt kind of deflated once I had written the last sentence to the last chapter. I was happy and knew that the significance of being done would probably hit me soon enough. But at the time, it was like climbing a steep hill and getting to the top, only to realize how tired I was and how far I still needed to walk to get back to the car!

Ah well. Like I said, I am sure I will hit me it eventually. And in the meantime, I’ve been encouraged and relieved to know that the publisher didn’t think it was pure crap! Because believe me, when you’re heavily invested in the creation of something, you really worry that others might not like it! And that is perhaps what made completing the manuscript so very difficult and time-consuming. It was not just me feeling like, “man, I need to finish this!” There was also the feeling of, “but what if this doesn’t work out? What if this is no good? Have I wasted all this time? Will I have to start over?”

In the meantime, all I can do is wait and stay cautiously optimistic. The publisher has told me that they anticipate finishing the book by sometime next week; at which point, I imagine we’ll start talking about edits and contracts, etc. Getting close, people! Fingers crossed!