BABBOOK DRAFT #1 - FINISHED!

Hello, hello, hello, oh lovely readers! Yes, that's right - my blog title does not deceive you - the first draft of the Beauty and the Beast retelling and companion novel to Shadows on the Moon is DONE.

That's all of it, right there, in it's original longhand form on top and typed up and printed out in the folder on the bottom (which is already collecting Post-It notes as ideas for revisions occur to me). It'll stay there for my usual two week maturation period before I re-read it, mark the manuscript up, and then edit the whole thing. Once that's done it'll go off to Wonder Editor and Super Agent and we'll see what they have to say.

Normally at this point I'd be indulging in an orgy of reading, DVD and TV watching, and fun train journeys to various nearby metropolises - but on the very same day that I finished this first draft of BaBBook my copyedits for Frail Human Heart popped into my inbox, so I'm working on those instead. It's not exactly a hardship: I have very, very fond feelings towards Frail Human Heart and am not at all sick of it (which I usually am of every book, by copyedit stage!) but I definitely want to be finished before my birthday next week, so that I can enjoy a day out without feeling guilty.

Some facts about BaBBook in its first draft - all of which are subject to change between now and publication:

• It is just over 83k words long. This is longer than Frail Human Heart (81k) but shorter than Shadows on the Moon (103k)
• The first word in the book is Once (that's in the preface) but the first word of the first chapter is There (you can read the first page and see the book's writing playlist here, if you haven't already)
• The heroine's name is Hana. It means 'flower' 
• I wrote the last 50k of this book in four weeks
• I had a mega-huge dramatic emotional scene planned for the end of the book, but I got five lines into it, stopped, looked at what I'd written, and decided THAT was the perfect place to end instead. The same thing happened when writing Shadows on the Moon, oddly enough!
• The last word of the book is You
• BaBBook contains not only talking trees, monsters, and shapeshifters, but also the undead (they weren't in the outline, I don't even know what happened)
• There are twenty three chapters
• Just like Shadows on the Moon, the book starts with a haiku
• Now that I'm finished I can finally take this pile of books off the arm of my chair! They've been there for over a year.

In other news, the copies of Things I'll Never Say (which has the Shadows on the Moon prequel story about Akira) have arrived from Amazon, and I'm ready to do the giveaway!

Let's make this one low key - just comment on this post and tell me a secret (big or small) and then tweet a link to this post with the hashtag #thingsillneversay and in a week's time I'll put all the names into a random number generator and pick out two winners. You must use the hashtag, folks, or I won't be able to find and count your tweet. Each winner will get a signed copy of the book and assorted swag. This is UK only.

Next week I'm planning to do another music post - I was thinking I'd do my top six all-time favourite songs by female artists or female led bands, and then the following week the top six by male artists or male led bands. This isn't including classical or soundtrack stuff, because I recommend that all the time, so you've already seen all my favourites there.

If anyone has any questions about writing or reading, or suggestions for post topics, let me know in the comments and I'll see what I can make of them. Read you later, muffins!