C'est fini, mes amis!

Just as everything said in Latin sounds better, everything said in French sounds...je ne sais quoi...classier. Or at least it makes you wish you had a flagon of wine and a baguette and a scantily-clad woman smoking a cigarette through a long, black filter. Or maybe that's just me.

Anyway, in case you're Francophobic and can't understand what I'm getting at, it is done. In the furor surrounding the release of both the Potter book and the Potter movie (which I still haven't seen yet...anyone want to go with me, especially if you're hot and of loose moral fiber?), I kind of missed this, but I did need to get out there the whole Regulus/Scrimgeour non-connection thing. *sigh*

First, let me give you the important numbers:

Word Count: 174900
Page Count: 574

Overall, perhaps a little longer than I wanted, but if you go by the 1/4 rule (how it will actually be bound) that's only about 430 pages, which is not a bad length, especially if my first book comes out in a trade paperback (not that 574 is daunting, but, whatever).

So, what next? Lots of time wasting. Actually, I'm going to take a couple of days where I just screw around, and then I plan on doing the re-read where I'll go and make a few corrections, word substitutions, and whatnot. I hope to have this thing ready to go by the middle of August.

As a whole, I'm very pleased with the book. The ending chapters (which I did in descending order, once more) turned out to be some of the strongest in the entire story (which you would hope for). I was really pleased with how the characters who had to die died, and I was pleased with how the other characters who did not die turned out. I did, however, leave one character out of the last battle, so I will have to fix that. He'll have a minor role, but still, he needs to be there. Overall, I might sound a little smug, but I do feel really good about this story.

Once the re-read is finished, I'll, of course, send it out for publishing. I'll keep updates going about that.

And then, then...THEN....I return to the kingdom of Kallabria and start fixing The Hundred Kings Saga. I want to have another book ready to go when/if Boar War gets published. So, by the end of the year, I want to have Boar War out (what a great Christmas present) and at least in the hands of some publishers/agents, and then have both King of Shadows and King of Thistles done and ready to go. Since I don't have a lot of work to do on King of Shadows, that's going to be done by Halloween, easily. I have a few chapters I need to write in King of Thistles to round out that story and help lead into King of Storms (which has a handful of chapters written already). We could be looking at four books by this time next year.

Granted, that's getting the cart before the horse (with mad props going out to Lynn Schaeffer, my 4th grade teacher, who always used to say that), but I'm fired up about getting Boar War finished. I might be on a high right now, so...anyway.

Now, off to rot my mind with video games...although, the evening is perfect for a cigar and some beer on the back porch...