12th and Final Draft Exists

I've been working hard on Redemption on the River and it's very, very close to being finished.

Laurie the Editor worked on the 10th draft.  As previously reported, it took a while to digest her detailed edits on the manuscript itself as well as her 75 page overall report.  I finally got my act together, sat down, and managed to produce the 11th draft.  Many deep breaths were taken.

When I looked at the 11th, overall I was very pleased.  The book was much, much improved.  However comma I was unhappy with chapters 1 and 2.  They were rather abrupt, choppy, and didn't sound like me.  I didn't like them.  Not a good thing.

So, after another period of rest, reflection, and recharging, I did another rewrite of RotR.  There were no significant changes to chapters 3-23, which I'm happy with, but I sat down with some new ideas and a clean sheet of paper for chapter 1, and wrote until it melded into the existing structure.  I'm pleased with the results, the flow is much better, and I believe it addresses and incorporates things that Laurie brought up in her edit of the 10th draft.

So, I'm nearly done.  The book, for the first time, feels finished.  I'm going through the 12th draft with a red pen and it's 99.4% simply proofreading now.