82,000 words later….

Back in December I started working on turning Running With A Police Escort into a book and as of Sunday night, I am done with the manuscript!

This is just Phase I of book writing. In terms of fiction and novels, often the book comes first and then the writer starts shopping it around. (At least with early novels. Once a writer gets big enough they can sell an idea before a word is written.) In the non-fiction world, it’s ideas that are sold more often than not. My publishing company offered me a contract based solely on my proposal.

That was the easy part. After signing, then came the hard part: actually writing the book.

Me being me, I set up a spreadsheet with word count benchmarks to keep me on track. For the most part I did a good job of staying on track, although there was a bit of a struggle back in April. Admittedly, back in April, I was actually worried I wouldn’t be able to do this. I wondered if I had taken too much on, if I was in over my head, but I just kept on at it (and maybe turned my editor into a bit of a therapist) and voila!

Now I have to format the manuscript to Skyhorse’s specifications and then send it off to my editor and there will be a period of rewrites and all of that but the really big part is over!