The fourth draft of Not by Sword is finally done!

So what’s next?

Now the book is with beta readers (If you’re reading this in January or early February, it’s not too late to join the beta read! Shoot me a message and we’ll talk!). I’ve asked them to finish their read and provide me with their feedback by the end of February. The question then is how long it will take to assimilate their feedback and make appropriate changes to the manuscript. Last year, it only took about a month to address the thoughts of my two alpha readers, so I’ll allow the same amount of time here. So, March is for beta feedback and draft 5.

The next step is getting a copyeditor. I’ll go through Reedsy again, and I’ll need to book a spot on somebody’s calendar a few weeks in advance, so I’ll probably shoot for early April. I’ve never had feedback from a copyeditor before, so I have no idea how long it’s going to take me to get through it. The feedback from my developmental editor took months to write into a new draft, but it was high-level story and character development. I anticipate that the copyedits will be more straightforward, so I’ll allot a day per chapter. The last chapter is 34, but I accidentally included two chapter 27s, and there’s a prologue, so that’s 26 days. If I edit 5 days a week, that’s about 7 weeks, so we’ll round up to eight. So mid-June I ought to be done with draft 6.

That one will go out to proofreaders, and then I’ll go through those edits and have draft 7 done at the end of July.

Having said all of that, I’m tentatively planning on a September 2026 release!

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