Done with the First Draft

I just finished the first draft of my second novel, Rumors of War.

The writing took longer than I expect for several reasons. The first was that the story just kept growing on me. The word count currently stands at 94,784 words. That, in turn, is partly because I spent more time filling in the descriptions and doing the research needed for the details now rather than in the second or third draft. Thus, I'm hoping my revisions won't take as long as for my first novel and that I'll need to do fewer drafts. I think my first readers would like that, too, since I think they're getting impatient. ;)

In any case, I'm taking a week off for the holidays. Merry Christmas!