You may have noticed that it’s been ages a little while since I’ve blogged about my progress on my WiP, The Big Smoke. That’s because, well… there hasn’t been much progress – until recently. Don’t get me wrong, I was doing a lot of thinking about my book and the feedback from my first group of beta readers, I just wasn’t making many hard and fast decisions about what changes to make. I guess I just needed some time for the ideas to percolate.
And percolate they did. Last week, I finally got my butt back in the chair and my fingers on the keyboard and made the hard decisions. And you know what? I’m really happy with how it’s come together. My beta readers helped me to see my work through different eyes and gave me some awesome ideas about where I could push things just that little bit further to really ramp up the tension.
So now that the changes are done, the manuscript is off to beta reader group two! My original plan was to get it to this group in December last year – hah! What high hopes I had. 
The last group received The Big Smoke in three chunks, whereas the new group will get it in one hit, so I’m looking forward to their feedback in terms of overall consistency and repetition that may not have been apparent to the first group (plus their opinions on anything else, of course).
I’ve asked the second group to give me their feedback within six to eight weeks, and while I’m waiting, I’ll be doing a lot more research into the Australian self publishing market (more on this soon) and starting to plot my next book. YAH!! How exciting is that?! I’ve been working on The Big Smoke (previously Tangled, previously Entwined…) for SO long, I can’t wait to create some new characters. My next book will still be young adult, but it’s going to have some historical and science fiction-y elements too. Can’t wait!
Your turn
How’s your writing going? Hit any major milestones recently? Or, avoiding making any hard decisions? 