The first draft of the outline for my 3rd book, The Rotten Core, is complete! This will be the sequel to The Gray Shift and book # 2 in the PDX CTB duology.

The outline came out to 44 chapters and 17,974 words long, an average of 408.5 words per chapter. That word count is a little below the ~500 words per chapter I usually like to get to in an outline but it covers all the basics.

I am going to make at least two more revisions before sending this out to my editor. For The Gray Shift I worked with my editor at the outline level before starting to write the full manuscript and that approach seems to be more efficient overall. Instead of having to burn everything to the ground and start all over from scratch like I did with Full Coverage, I only needed to delete one scene out of 39 chapters in The Gray Shift, which saves a lot of writing time/effort.

While working on this outline I decided to change the name from The Unsettled Compromise to The Rotten Core. That title fits the story better and is much more direct. It also makes the teaser I’m planning on putting at the end of The Gray Shift a lot simpler and easier to understand.

Current plan is:

• Revise The Rotten Core outline 2 more times
• Send The Rotten Core outline to my awesome editor for feedback
• Revise The Gray Shift full manuscript 3 times to implement all the changes from the feedback I’ve received from my editor and beta testers.
• Send The Gray Shift to my editor and beta testers for one final check
• Self-Publish The Gray Shift, hopefully by the end of this year