Muahaha

Well, folks, I don't have much to say today, mostly because I'm just basking in celebration. 

A week or so ago I shared with y'all that I had finished the first draft of my book, 27 Million Revolutions, detailing the story and reflections of my bike trip fighting slavery.  At the time I estimated that the finished product would contain about 60,000 words--the other day Danielle asked me to calculate how many pages that would be, so I picked up a book that seemed to have average-sized paper and average font/line spacing, literally counted all the words on a page in that book, then did some math: turns out 60,000 words equals approximately 180 pages, a lot more than I thought.  Anyway, I have now basically completed adding all that I want to include from my blog that I kept during the trip and have been less-than-regularly updating since the trip and from the Polaris Project website and other materials that I used during the trip.  The total is now a little more than 80,000 words. 

Now the editing begins.  I'll be printing out the manuscript and doing the editing the old-fashioned way, which is the only way I know how.  The word count will go up a bit at first, and then fall a bit more after.  80,000 might be the final count.  Then I'll have a real book that won't just be some small little crap thing. 

Originally I had thought that I'd be done by the end of October.  But even a thorough editing will only take approximately four or five days; then a perhaps a little more time to let my friends and first-readers to offer feedback and such and edit a bit more if that feedback is not entirely to my liking. 

Want to be a first-reader?  Just let me know by e-mailing me or something and I'll e-mail you a copy after the editing is finished.  Go me!  And go fighting slavery!