Three Months!

IRL Update

Another Sunday is here! The blog post is coming late today because hubby and I tried to have a nice outing to see a historic building (a setting that's very relevant to The Mark of Thieves, actually) . . . but the lines were too long AND we also got hailed and rained on. We self-soothed with sushi, cappuccinos, vegan pumpkin bread, and some thrifting. (I got a necklace to wear with my COMPLETED Regency dress! Yay!)

Hail. In May. LATE MAY. HAILSTONES.

The exterior of a historic jail. We didn't get in for a tour today, but I'll be back.

Writing Update

Folks, we are getting SO close to calling TMOT "done." And just in time, too — because Tuesday, May 27 marks THREE MONTHS until release day! (I'm celebrating by going to see a musical. Is anyone surprised?)

I finished my proofread the other day, got through the Microsoft Word spell-check round in a day (anyone else noticed that their checker kind of, um, sucks?), and am now going to go through it with ProWritingAid before I send the document off for external proofreading.

Hubby is still reading it (the unedited proof copy), and that's been fun! In his words:

• "I'm enjoying it more than I thought I would!" 😂 (This was a NICE thing, not a mean thing. My husband mostly reads literary fiction and nonfiction/nature books. The man is not my target audience, so this was quite the compliment, I think.

• "You were really influenced by Pirates of the Caribbean, huh? Like, the girl [meaning Bree] was supposed to marry the baddie but she went off looking for adventure and now she's part of the naughty crew . . ." (😅 He's not wrong.)

• "I'm basically imagining Hatchett as Judge Claude Frollo." (Cue me realizing that not only is Hatchett Javert, but he is, in fact, also Frollo, and oh my god is TMOT just Victor Hugo fanfic??)

I also GOT HIM with a plot twist (even though, hilariously, I'd mentioned that very plot twist to him at some point), which was a fun little moment. He didn't see it coming! I'm not sure if that's good or bad (was there enough foreshadowing???), but I'm going to relish the 'gotcha!' feeling anyway.

ID: A screenshot showing that the word count is now at 101,038.

So, I had this darn book under 101k — and then I added a few hundred words to a Bree chapter to write a moment that had been unfairly glossed over before. Le sigh. Hopefully my ProWritingAid pass will help me get it back under 101k.

Coming Soon . . .

• full blurb release

• the cover reveal! (It's almost here!)

• actual newsletter communication, yippee!

TPSOS Progress

This week was a WILD one for The Patron Saint of Scoundrels. The revised part of the manuscript is now at 57,424 words, and the full thing is over 101k. It'll get trimmed in editing, of course, but—wow!

Obviously, finishing the TMOT proofread was good for TPSOS. It also helped that I've made it to an exciting, action-heavy part of the story, AND I added a new (very emotional) scene. (See below. 😉) And also a rather self-indulgent moment that I'm not sorry about in the slightest.

Snippet

Yeah, you're getting one sentence and one sentence only of that new, emotional scene, because I won't dare spoil the moment.

It stings as fiercely as it soothes; it pulses, a heartbeat, rapid and out of control as a wildfire.

 . . . okay, fine, I'll also share the paragraph I already posted on Tumblr because I was too excited about it. :)

Because Will and I are sprawled on the courtroom floor, me on top of him as if I could possibly shield him from the mayhem unfolding around us. I hate myself for noticing every detail about him, even though that’s the last thing my brain should be doing. I drink in the soft fall of his auburn hair, now in hopeless disarray from our collision, and admire the silky wisps that brush against his eyelashes. His hazel eyes are misty with pain, still swimming in a sea of fading grey-to-yellow bruising, but they’re not bleary, thank goodness. They widen, meeting mine, and his mouth turns into a perfect, astonished O.

Have a wonderful week, everyone!