Aaaaand DONE! (at least with the first draft)

This is what someone looks like when she completes the first draft of her second novel:

Alright, so it's what I look like. But I did it. I completed that difficult first draft of novel #2, WINTER ON BRIMSTONE HILL.

In case you've forgotten (not that you'd care to remember. I get that.) what it looked like when I completed my first draft of novel #1, it looked like this:

Here are some comparisons:

1. D1 of N1: that's me inside in my jammies after having eaten an entire box of chocolate. D1 of N2: I'm outside in the shade (and not in my jammies). My hair surprisingly looks the same. Weird. Okay, so no one really cares about that.
2. D1 of N1: completed during February vacation, after <2 months of writing. D1 of N2: April vacation, after 5.5 months.
3. D1 of N1: I look a lot more excited than I am with D1 of N2. Part of that is because it's true. There's something exciting about completing that first book that can't be matched with the second. I guess the main difference here is that with N2, I've proven to myself that I can do it. More than one story exists in me, which is comforting. Awfully comforting.

So yeah, there you go. Now to reread that which I haven't read since November. Oh, and if you haven't read it yet, here's what WINTER ON BRIMSTONE HILL is about.

New Betas Wanted

There we go. I just did it. I sent the request to my principal for approval to obtain a new panel of beta readers. I'm, what I estimate to be, four or five hours of work away from a completed rough draft of WINTER ON BRIMSTONE HILL.

The novel itself has been more difficult to write than LitD. It's taken its toll emotionally. Whereas LitD was a constant high, a wave of pleasure and pride and fantasy, I've had more doubt about WINTER's contents...and more nightmares.  It's the book that I wonder at being able to write at all, and that at some points I feel trapped within. It's high school and college wrapped together--the containment within institutional walls with the delicate promise of liberation in the end.

I look forward to revisions.