This marks the first of my official monthly updates! First, a few stats showing my progress on I Am Providence:

Words: 10,991
Characters: 63,120
Characters (No Spaces): 52,469
Paragraphs: 358
Sentences: 685
Average Paragraph Length: 30 words
Average Sentence Length: 16 words
Documents: 45
Average Document Length: 244 words
Longest Document: 1,451 words
Shortest Document: 9 words
Pages (paperback): 32
Pages (printed): 0
Estimated Reading Time: 00:43:57

That’s nice and all, but word count alone doesn’t provide the full picture of what has been accomplished this past month—or, more accurately, just over the past three weeks.

Since Little Dagon was published, I re-taught myself how to use Scrivener, created multiple custom character and plot structures tailored to my writing style, built a reusable Scrivener workspace and project template, fleshed out plot points and synopses for sixteen separate story arcs before weaving them together into a single cohesive story, created a fully realized author website from scratch, launched new Facebook and Instagram pages that I’ve been keeping regularly updated, designed a new non-AI cover for Little Dagon… oh, and also somehow managed to write almost 11,000 words of I Am Providence.

Whew. Typing all that out makes me realize just how much goes into being a “part-time” author!

My goal for August is to finish the month at around 25,000 words, which would put the manuscript at roughly 25% complete. My original target for Act I was 30,000–40,000 words, but I’d rather let each chapter and act end naturally than feel obligated to artificially pad them. At my current pace, I think the first act will wrap up somewhere around 20,000–25,000 words.

In other news, this past month we discovered two new food establishments (shout-out to Moo Moo’s Pub in Hampden and The Rolling Pin Café & Bakery in Winterport!), visited a new lighthouse (Fort Point in Stockton Springs), and started touring… gasp… retirement communities! That’s how we old folks roll.

August in Maine is all about the mighty blueberry, so that’s something we have to look forward to.

Okay, this is supposed to be an author update, not an autobiography, so I’ll stop here.

As always, thank you for your interest and support. At this stage, the best thing you can do to help me (besides reading and reviewing Little Dagon!) is to follow my social media pages and like, comment on, and share my posts.

Until next time…