amoeba book reproduces by fission

A strange and sudden freedom has fallen on me. As you may recall, I've been
struggling along with the ever-expanding expansion of Cost of Silver,
occasionally despairing of it ever being completely filled in, and repeatedly
extending my self-imposed deadlines. Well!
Over the last few weeks, I'd been comparing the almost-completely-filled-in
first 'half' with the much-left-to-go second 'half' and realising that if I did the
English Civil War justice, I was going to have a novel of at least 180k,
probably more.
Also that, although I had tightened the timeline considerably, there was
still a natural break between part one: fen-draining and vampires, and
part two: war and witchfinders.

As part one crept up past 90k, I began to believe that either I had two books
on my hands or I needed to stop expanding and start trimming. Yikes! But this
is what's great about having an agent who started as an editor. I emailed her
and asked 'how about I send you part one and
you can give me an opinion as to which way I should handle this?'
She said 'great, send it to me.'

After some Adventures in Formatting, followed by Adventures in Printing,
The Cost of Silver part one: The Astrologer's Death, 94k,* is on its way to
my agent for her considered advice.

And its author is on her way to Pennsylvania for two weeks of mostly-offline life.
I've brought actual paper notebooks and pens, so I'll still be writing. I'm planning
to mess around with a YA story idea riffing on the YA paranormal romance genre,
most easily summarised as 'Maenads at Band Camp". I think it will be fun.

Posting from Missoula Montana - goodnight!

*part two stands at 55k, which is a little under where the sketched-out first draft
stood when I started expanding it in January. So I must have written about 90k in
7 months. Maybe I really am a 'book a year' writer!