Today I finish.

Today I finish the second draft of Blood of the Succubus.

It's going to be about 84K words, a thousand short of my guess. I'm still betting it will be 90K words by the end of the third draft.

I took the Goddess chapters (which tell the origins of the Succubae) to writer's group last night and they were lavish with their praise. Susan called it "high level" writing and other things too generous to say here.  Rather reassuring. Of course, Susan had suggested I write these chapters at the last group...

It feels like a much more layered, textured book than before.

I have to add a couple new characters into the ending chapter, but that shouldn't be too hard.

Then I take a couple days off, and then start researching.  Looking for Goddess elements I can include.  I've got Robert Grave's White Goddess, (which is an impenetrable read but full of poetic passages) and I'm thinking of a couple others.

Then take the rest of the month for a full on rewrite, beginning to end, fleshing out the book and improving it as best I can.

If nothing else, this book will have had the full professional effort.