I finished the first draft of Kindred of the Wood this evening.  It’s now in simmering mode, and ML is on board to give it a content read later next week.  Ended up clocking in at a little over 13.5k.

As for the surprise, I had a weird little ( around 900 words ) non-erotic story pop in my head, and wrote it in about the space of an hour.  “Ride no More” is probably going to make some people scratch their heads, but I like it anyway.  It’s going in the Summer contest as well, so it’ll probably come out on opening day with Queen.

11,500 on Kindred, with only the sex and the closer to go.  If nothing goes wrong, I’ll finish the first draft tomorrow.  Then I’ll let it sit for a day or two, read back through it, give it my first pass edit, and get it out to first readers.

I might see if I can pass this one through Mistress Lynn, who did the content editing on both Forever and Secret.  If she has the time, I’ll stand up to the painful scrutiny of her eye that made both of those contest winners, even though I’m not eligible to win in this contest by virtue of winning this last Earth Day.

After that, we’ll see what’s striking me.  Lots of possibilities floating around — some known, some not.

I dived into Kindred thinking it was going to be a much shorter story than Secret, but I’m at 8100 words right now.  Of course, I may end up trimming some stuff out after reading back through it again — I’ve done that already on this story — but it obviously isn’t going to come out below 10k words, where I expected it to.

The next couple of scenes are the ones that bring everything together and further fan the flames.  Then, it’s the shocking revelation, and a sweet little ending.  Shooting to finish it this weekend, but I always say that, don’t I?

Moving along on Kindred of the Wood.  I’m getting to the meat of the story now, bringing my two protagonists together, and getting ready to spring the surprise of a lifetime on them 🙂

Just taking a quick break after finishing a warm-up scene for all that, and then I’m heading back to it.  The young one is still a little slowed down from just getting up, so I’ve got a little more time before he goes wild for the day.

With any luck, I’ll have plenty of reports of forward progress as the weekend goes on.