We're SO Close to Finished!

You guys, I am absolutely dying to get on here and tell you that FIGHTING FOR FREEDOM is complete...but it isn't yet. Christine's story deserves the very best effort I can put in, so I'm trying hard to make sure I'm not rushing things. At this point, I'm closing in on the end of the final chapter, and I had fully expected to be finished with this novel by now, but sometimes life has other plans. 

This past week was pretty busy; we spent part of it still snowed in after last week's huge snowstorm, complete with school closures and the hassle of running out of eggs. I also lost a full writing day, but for a really wonderful reason: making a long drive with a friend to Memphis. The trip was a one-way for my friend, and it was not under happy circumstances, but the trip itself was well worth the time spent and the exhausted state I arrived home in. 

But now that we're getting back to normal weather and school attendance, I'm working to get my writing routine back on schedule, and I'm literally paragraphs away from the end of FIGHTING FOR FREEDOM - so I think this is a great time to share what's coming next:

1. When the rewriting is finished, I intend to let the book rest for a week. Take a break from it, let it settle in my mind.
2. While that rest week passes, I've planned to get caught up on some things that have been neglected while writing took over my schedule. I intend to go through my house room by room, deep-cleaning and decluttering as many spaces as I can fit into each room's allotted day. Even if I don't choke to death on dust, I at least anticipate several trips to my local donation center, and I may or may not rearrange my furniture multiple times. There might be pictures (so make sure you're following me on social media, because they'll most likely end up in my Instagram stories or my monthly TikTok recap), but no promises!
3. Once the rest week is complete, I'll dig back into FIGHTING FOR FREEDOM, reading through it and working with my team to polish it as much as possible. And after that, I'll shelve this book for a while to work on STILL FIGHTING FOR FREEDOM, in accordance with the publishing plan I've outlined here before. At that point we'll have a new sidebar graphic ("Current Work In Progress") to track the progress of that novel, and I'll get to update my "13 Books?" graphic as well!

In the meantime, I'm learning that slow and steady progress is valuable without being a source of burnout, and I'm so grateful for those of you who support this huge undertaking! I admit, this is not the most entertaining update, but it's all I have for this week, and I'm super excited to be closing in on the next phase of my plan.

And with that said, I'm off to hopefully finish this last chapter!