I’m almost done with the first draft of my new time travel mystery, Not Expecting This. Only two chapters left. Now, it’s only a matter of getting the final scenes written. It’s a time when I can relax, take a deep breath, and slide into home base, so to speak.

Of course, the book won’t be finished. It will be heading into a new phase, a phase where the book will evolve and almost certainly grow a bit. That’s because my first drafts tend to be light on details in spots, kind of like an extensive outline. Some writers write incredibly long first drafts and then they go through them and cut them down, kind of like taking a timber and chiseling it into a fine statue.

With mine,  I always go back through the manuscript, looking for areas where I need to expand scenes, add more detail, research a bit further to ensure accuracy, etc. The rewriting/self-editing phase is tedious, but can also be fun, because I already know that the story works. It’s only a matter of fine-tuning it, or as many writer friends say, self-editing is when we polish our books and make them shine.

Once the self-editing is done, I’ll turn the book over to my editor, who will check it over for inconsistencies, plot-holes, typos, other mistakes, etc. He’ll also do line-edits, meaning he’ll tweak the wording in some places.

I’ll also need to figure out what kind of book cover I want for this book. It will be the third book in my Bavarian Woods time travel series–following Inherit the Past and Tanglewood Grotto–but I’m considering also making it the first book in a new series for adults and young adults. That would make this kind of a spin-off series.

I’ll also need to decide on a title. It’s working title has been Not Expecting This, since I first came up with the idea. The reason for the title is that a seventeen-year-old pregnant girl unexpectedly time travels back to the Gold Rush days in Colorado. Another character–one from my Bavarian Woods series–also unexpectedly time travels to the same location. I sure do make things difficult for these young people. Anyway, whether this is a good title or not, I haven’t figured out. If anyone wants to make suggestions for a better title, please do.

Thanks, everyone, for reading my blog and my books. While the editor works on edits for this book, I’ll be working on the sequel to Breadcrumbs and Bombs. I’m trying to get new books out there as quickly as I can!