I am nearly finished with the first draft of a mystery novel. I’ve written just over 70,000 words (aiming for 72-75,000) and looking ahead to having a completed first draft. There is still a lot of work ahead to make it worthwhile reading, but 70,000 words is the longest I’ve written to date on a story, and is progress worth celebrating a tiny bit. It’s not the first book I’ve written, but it’s the longest and so far, I think the best one. How to celebrate? In my case, I’m celebrating by posting this illustration/concept (an idea of a cover, but not the cover, with my tentative title and author name cropped off the top because I’m not ready to share those yet but I will later).

For now, what I do have to share is that I’ve written a story long enough to be a novel, and I’m fairly happy with it, and it has all of these things: a retired from military service Belgian Malinois, a former service member turned landscape architect, a large estate abandoned for many years with an elaborate and overgrown garden, a skeleton found on the edge of the garden, a hint of the supernatural, some pirate treasure, family archives, a love story, a mystery (actually two, one present and one past) and a thief. If I were really talented, I would have a hooky line to make you absolutely want to read it right away, but I’m not and it’s not ready… I’m still working on it.

Once this draft is finished, I plan to outline Book Two (this is a series), and then revisit and edit Book One after it’s had some time as a first draft and I have more perspective on what to fix and what to do after that. More to come!