Right, it's the New Year, so it's probably time to start plugging my wares.  As I may have mentioned once or twice, my new book The Knife of Never Letting Go is released 5th of May here in the UK and in September in the US.  Try it, you'll like it.

The way publishing works, though, I finished that book back in June and have been working ever since on the next book in the trilogy.  I finished the first draft just before Christmas, took a break, and have just begun serious work on the second draft. 

Second drafts are where I've always considered the real writing begins.  You're no longer facing the agony of a blank page every day; you're facing a huge heap of words that are now waiting to be sculpted into something that looks like you knew what you were doing all along. 

My first draft was 123,000 words.  The second draft will probably also be about that, but I'm the only one who's ever going to know how many of those are still the same (answer: not many).  If I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times:  writing isn't for wimps (I've usually said it far more vulgarly, but it is a young adult novel). 

The next six months for me will be all heavy lifting.  How about you?