The Bone Thief - update

I am very excited, relieved and terrified to be able to tell you that the first draft of The Bone Thief is very almost finished. All I have to do is write the final closing scene(s) and I'm done. I've hit about 60K which is about right for this stage of things.

I need to add in a legend at the beginning and lots of additional scenes - the joys of being a discovery writer. But I think this method works well in the end for me because it usually adds a lot of depth to the story and makes the novel stronger. Also, I suck at plotting.

Next steps for me now are to print out the manuscript, notate all the comments from my wonderful critique group, do a chapter breakdown to see whether any chapters need to move around and create a timeline to make sure that my characters aren't trying to do everything in one day.

These bits and bobs are relatively painless. It's the next bit that requires more time and thought - the writing in of all the missing scenes. Unfortunately, this is the downside of my writing method and the reason why I print out my manuscript. It's so much easier to see all the characters and scenes if they are physically in front of you. I check individual character storylines, I check the main plot, I try to weed out all the inconsistencies and I write in all the XXX. 

XXX is a placeholder I use for the name of something that I haven't made up yet.

Then it's readthrough time to make sure the story still makes sense and I'm not missing anything further. Normally I would then put the book through ProWriting Aid which is a time-consuming process as I like to run various checks. In order to keep my brain fresh, I usually do it one chapter at a time. 

But, I played too much in the summer holidays and I am way behind my writing schedule so there is a very good chance that I will have to send the book off to beta readers before I've had the chance to put it through ProWriting Aid. For that, I can only apologise. Commas are my nemesis. 

They've all been briefed that they have a short turnaround to get the book back to me at which point I then collate all their comments and do another sweep through the manuscript making changes where needed. Then it's time for the final read-through.

At which point I will be sick to the back teeth of reading it lol. 

My favourite part of the whole process is formatting it ready for print. And with a pre-order deadline of November 12th, I need to keep my eye very firmly on the publishing ball. 

If you fancy pre-ordering a copy of The Bone Thief, you can do that here: PRE-ORDER

If you stumbled upon this blog post and have not read the previous humorous fantasy books in this series, you can catch up with The Rose Thief and The Silk Thief accordingly. Click the titles to be taken to buy links. Paperback and ebook are available from your favourite retailer. 

Claire Buss is a multi-genre author and poet, completely addicted to cake. Find out more about her books on her website clairebuss.co.uk. Join the discussion in her Facebook group Buss's Book Stop. Never miss out on future posts by following me.