So now what do you do?

At my office holiday party this past winter, I had the opportunity to try Bundaberg Root Beer. I didn’t realize it was an import root beer (from Australia), all I knew was that I was in love.

Fast forward a month or two, and I am working on the latest novel. I mentioned before that I had foolheartily targeted my birthday as a great date for trying to finish the novel by (I missed it, in case you were wondering). Having a little money in the bank, I decided to order myself a birthday present/reward for finishing the novel. I’d get myself some root beer.

The first thing to note is that it only comes in packs of four. Second is that among my children, those that like root beer love this stuff. I had to ration it out quickly (at, as it turns out, almost $4 a bottle). This isn’t a throwback root beer, its a celebrate a milestone beer.

Today, I finally got to open that last bottle. If you don’t follow me on twitter or facebook (and why should you? 🙂 ), I finished the first draft this morning. I originally targeted my birthday, with a conservative estimate of 60-70k, which is my usual draft length.

Instead, I finished this morning, two weeks late and at 90k. I’d like to think that extra 20-30k makes up for being a little late, no? And yes, if you look closely in the original picture (click the image to follow), you can almost make out the words of the last page of the novel. Hoozah!

For those not bored with the process already, the next steps involve rereading, revising, editing, sharing with beta readers, then slapping it around a little and coming up with a synopsis as I try to shop it around. Failing that, I’ll probably throw it up on Amazon. While not my usual type of fiction (horror-ish?), it was a lot of fun to write.