What? I finished writing a new novel for the first time in ten years?

That sounds awful. I knew I hadn’t been working on long fiction lately but I didn’t realize the last book I finished writing was Bad Fairy‘s second volume in 2015. What in the world?

Anyway, after many years of New Year’s resolutions to finish this book, I finally found something that worked: scheduling writing time. I never thought that would be me. But that’s what worked. I finished writing the damn book. I finished writing In Bloom. 

And here’s the big whammy: It’s almost 200,000 words long.

Even for adult fiction, that’s almost twice as long as the longest books are allowed to be these days (if you want any chance of getting published, that is, and you’re not dealing with a publisher you’ve got a relationship with already). But this is a freaking young adult book!

Yes, it’s science fiction, which is allowed a little extra for worldbuilding, but I am GOBSMACKED that I ended up with a book this huge. Yes, even though I know this has always been my largest issue and yes, even though I understand it’s normal for books to get whittled down.

I just am having a hard time imagining how I’m going to cut out nearly HALF of this thing. I’m cringing at the idea of approaching agents with a six-figure word count in YA at all.

I definitely have some scenes earmarked for deletion that I know I don’t need, and I’ll try to find LOTS more of them. I may be able to get between 25% and 45% of what I need cut chopped out by doing that. Then it will be tougher choices–cutting things I really want to keep, or shaving them down in ways that make me grumpy–and eventually, it’ll be fine tuning to shorten sentences, be more concise in general, turn scenes into montages, and nitpicking every word. I did once manage to get a book that was initially 171,000 words down to 115,000. I am capable of drastic chopping.

But right now I’m just grieving at the very idea of it. I think I need some distance. Maybe I’ll give myself a week off.

What’s good about this, you might ask? Give us some good news! Well, I love the book, I love the characters, and I think it will have some important things to say to people struggling with queerness in the modern world, especially if they come from conservative or religious families. I’ve got some really special stuff happening in these pages. The invented culture for the nonhumans is pretty innovative in some ways, and the connections my protagonist has to her spirituality feel pretty consistent and authentic. The relationship at the center of the story develops nicely (and is not without its problems, but conflict between them is not a huge focus in the story). And the focus on queer activism ended up being a little more robust than I expected.

I’m looking forward to getting a presentable product here and will be spending quite a lot of time with it before I ask for test readers, but if want to reach out to get on the list, you can do that at this time and I’ll let you know when I’m ready.