It’s telling that after my first revision of Howling Stars (Decker’s War Book 4), I realized that my editor would inevitably take me to task for the ending – again. I seem to have a habit of ending my stories too abruptly, perhaps because at that point in the first draft, I’m anxious to be done. This time, I decided to take the initiative and rework the ending before sending her the manuscript so that I don’t get scolded for it.

Considering that I expanded the epilog from a few pages into three full chapters, I probably wasn’t finished with the first draft when I declared myself to be so. Mind you, I might be told that it’s now too long, but probably not. My editor likes to see most threads neatly tied off, leaving only those concerning the wider series arcs hanging. We’ll see. I’m just about done with the revision, which means the manuscript will be in my editor’s hands by the end of this week.

In the meantime, I’ve come up with the MacGuffin for the fourth Siobhan Dunmoore adventure and have tentatively started to build the story skeleton during my breaks from revising Howling Stars, so yes, there will be a fourth novel in the series in 2017.

It is indeed a writer’s life for me.