BURIED DEEP (first draft) is done!

Twenty-five chapters, many of them much longer than I typically write, are behind me. There’s still more proofing to do, as well as final revising and editing, but the end result will be somewhere between 80-90,000 words, which is about the size of El Dorado.

Some books I finish and I think “that was a good one; I liked that.”

Some I finish and say “this one just never quite came together.”

As for Buried Deep, I’ll say my answer is more in between those two, but I can say for sure that the short story that inspired it is, in my estimation, better than the long-form book that sprang from it. It started as a short, and works as a short because, by nature, a short story has to be very economical with its plot developments. You have to get to the chase and not dwell on anything more than is necessary to get to the (twist, typically) ending.

Fleshing it out worked in a lot of ways, maybe not so much in others, and overall I’m satisfied, but not blown away.

Final work begins soon and it’s still on pace to be finished by Halloween.