I have a tendency to rush my endings. I’ve known about it for a while, but it’s hard to get past it because once the book gets to a certain point, the momentum picks up and everything’s driving forward and I LIKE it going fast because it’s nice and dramatic and I don’t want anything to slow it down.

However.

I sent the latest draft of Book 3 (Haunted Warriors) to Peter Matheson this week. He’s my first reader, and reads all my books before they go to the publisher – has done right from the beginning, starting with Museum of Thieves. I have great trust in him – he’s a dramaturg by trade, which gives him a keen eye for the shape of the story, amongst other things.

And when we spoke on the phone, he said I’d rushed the ending.

Ha.

So this week I’m going to look at it again. Because as Peter pointed out, there are some things/characters near the end that really shouldn’t be rushed because they are so important, and it wouldn’t hurt to spend a bit more time on them.

But the good news is, the book is almost finished. By which I mean not finished, exactly, because there’s still the whole editing process to go through with my publisher, and that always takes a while. But almost finished enough to send to my agent, who will send it to the publisher. And that’s always a major milestone.

Particularly considering that it’s not due until October 1.

I’m a bit astonished at being so far ahead of schedule. I think it must be because I took more care over my initial plotting. I usually get to the point with my plots where they seem good enough and I’m impatient to start writing. Which invariably means that the first draft is full of enormous holes, and things that don’t make sense, and scenes that end up getting cut entirely.

But with this book I actually kept going with the plot until I’d fixed most of the holes. So although my first draft was still a mess, it wasn’t nearly as much of a mess as usual.

Hmm, must remember this for the next book. Whatever it might be.