My first draft of Hemo Sapiens: Awakening is almost finished. Below is a screenshot of my Word document with the navigation panel open to show the chapters, sections, and working titles.
The content from Chapter 5 (with tweaks) was taken from my short story, The Unidentified, published here, so it’s not spoiler to share. Funny enough, I just notices an error in my screenshot. Emily’s daughter Grace is almost five*, so I’ve amended that in my draft.
For those wondering, I maintain a spreadsheet with the birthdates and ages of all of the characters, so I can age-progress them appropriately. And there are certain maturity stages that occur around a certain age, for example, when their fangs come in. Just turning five, Grace won’t have fangs yet.
At this point, I’ve got 250 pages and 37 chapters. I deleted over 1,000 more words today—from 57,641 to 56,616—, but I expect to remain over 50k.
I also started working on the title and subtitle artwork, which I’ll share when I’m done with it. As I already know the title and subtitle of my next book, which is at least 60% done (🤞) in its own right, I am making sure the Hemo Sapiens title art leves space to nestle in the subtitle.
I’m getting excited, but the finish line is still a ways away. I think I’ve reached a major milestone in completing the first draft—99.999%, I feel. I still need to work on the cover art and layout and lining up Beta readers.
* Grace is five in the short story, but she’s been demoted a few months in the novel.
Ridley Park 