First draft of 'Flotilla' is done

Greetings - I've obviously been deficient in maintaining the kind of blog updates that keep regular users online. But if you've come this far, you'll be glad to know that I've completed the first draft of my first novel - "Flotilla". I committed to having the first draft complete by the end of the year and this weekend I just started dashing toward the finish line. I stayed up until 2 or 3 in the morning, alternating between beer, ice cream and coffee to keep my energy going [note: I would not advocate this as a long-term health nutrition plan].

Other news since I last updated you: I got a rejection from a major sci-fi publishing house (surprise, surprise) and I'm perfectly fine with it. J.K. Rowling was rejected 12 times before the first Harry Potter book was published so I simply chalk it up to being part of the process. I'm moving onto the next step of the project, which was to get the beast printed out in submission format (turning 190 pages of text into 380), which ended up being very expensive - cost me $100 to print 3 copies of the novel at Kinko's.

I AM EXHAUSTED. That's what I wanted to say more than anything else. This has been a tremendous project and I'm completely burnt at this moment but I'm glad I have this big, fat wad of typescript to show for it. I printed out 3 copies but I have the whole beast on PDF if anyone else wants to volunteer to read a 380-page PDF file :).

I'm taking a break from writing - here or anywhere else.