Wow...

And I am finished.

Well, "finished" is maybe the wrong word. There are still two short chapters to write — detailing Scapegrace's little adventure - but basically, essentially, that's it. I'm done. I've just sent the official first draft of The Dying of the Light over to Nick, my editor, and Michelle, my agent. They've both read a rough version a few weeks ago so I know there's not going to be much in the way of changes when I start editing next week. Which is a relief. And word count, you ask? Word count?

Well, at the moment, before the edit and missing two little chapters, the word count stands at 153,193.  I can't find the exact count, but I think LSODM was about 161,000, so it'll be pretty close in size. I genuinely thought this would be a much smaller book, closer to Dark Days in terms of length. My editor, however, knew the word count would just explode once I started to do what I planned. The book is, he has told me, "hugely ambitious". So there's that.

And I'm glad it's taken me this long to write it, to be honest. I'm glad TDOTL is going to be a heavy, substantial book. It is the end, after all. It deserves to be weighty.

It has still to hit me, by the way. The fact that this IS the end. I think when the edit is finished it'll occur to me that there'll be no more Skulduggery books. Not exactly looking forward to that moment.

On a cheerier note, I've seen Tom Percival's rough sketch of the cover, and it will literally KILL YOU with feels.

Which, now that I think of it, probably isn't a cheerier note at all.

We have such cool ideas for the coming year, plenty of AMAZING events to announce, and I can't wait to let you all in on what we're planning. The next two days, in fact, I will be spending in a massive meeting about those very same events.

The Year of the Requiem is gonna ROCK.