Edits, Edits, Everywhere it's EDITS!

Not a lot of actual writing done the last few days, because I'm up to my ears in revisions. I got the final edits for Nine Tenths of the Law, which are finished and returned to the editor. Only a few steps to go before that book is ready to be released. I will not check my e-mail every 5 minutes to see if I have cover art. I will not check my e-mail every 5 minutes to see if I have cover art. I will not-

Anyway. I'm nearly done editing World Enough and Time (No, Vanessa, that book is not going into the Wangstbasket!). I've stripped about 11,000 words out, bringing it down to a hair under 84,000. Now I'm going back through and adding a few bits here and there to bring out the main character's relationship with a couple of minor characters. That will probably add less than 1,000 words. I think a total of 7 chapters were axed (including 3 of those scenes (tm)), which meant performing some wholesale darling genocide. Okay, so I did rescue a few darlings...you know, that occasional bit of prose that just has to stay in the book somehow. I snipped them, wove them into other scenes, and they will live to...to...do whatever it is they do another day. Hey, I may be brutal on my darlings, but I'm not a monster.

My guess is that this revision will be done today, at which point I will send it off to Scarlett and Libbie for a quick second look. Then...assuming it meets their approval...it's off to the big scary world of querying with a Scarlettized query and synopsis.

Make me proud, Connor. Make me proud.

Oh, and as soon as World Enough and Time is sent to Scarlett and Libbie, it's back to work on Cover Me, which is already starting to nag at me to return and finish it. Libbie is under strict orders to kick me in the buttocks if I'm not working on it by February 6th. It's a safe bet, judging by my progress on World Enough and Time and the nagging coming from my characters, that this won't be a problem.