After nearly 6 weeks of working on a freelance editing job (I don't take many of those, and this was really bad timing, but we really needed the money), I'm finally back to writing.  I'd actually have more work to do on the freelance project, but after looking at the comments I wrote on the first half of the novel, the author is not quite sure where he wants to go from here.  Doing any more work would be a wasted effort on both our parts if he decides he needs to rewrite it with my comments in mind (which was my suggestion).  For now, he's going to focus on other things that seem to be going along pretty well, which releases me to get back to my own work.

These things happen.  I hope Assassin's sells, and I think it's well written, but I secretly suspect it's either going to be a novel out of time (as in, the kind of novel not being bought/read at the moment) or require yet another huge rewrite if it does get accepted.  Either one would be depressing, but both are often the name of the game in publishing, and you have to be able to roll with it.

I'm hoping to finish A.C. v5 before we close on our house on the 31st (house thing is a whole 'nother story that I don't want to get into other than to say who knew buying a house was such freaking WORK).  It can then percolate and I can consider some of the changes I know I need to make in next round while doing repairs, moving, and settling into new house.  When all that's done I can get back to it, make the changes I've determined I need to make, make one more pass based on crits, then get the whole mess out to beta readers some time after the holidays (it might be done before the holidays, but I would not put a 500 page manuscript on anyone's to do list during that time).

I'm also working on another, unrelated, Alden novel that's part of a 5 book series and my first urban fantasy.  They give me soemthing to work on between rounds of revisions on A.C., but A.C. is the priority.  Really want to get it on the market-go-round early next year.