. . . is, as of last night, finished, at just a little over 100,000 words, making it the longest epic in the Shika Trilogy, with 28 chapters and an epilogue to boot. To celebrate, I drank a bottle of Gatorade. Yay!

Unlike the last two drafts, I am very happy with this one, since it came out quite well in my opinion. But like all first drafts (or third, in this case? whatever) it will need some editing. Heck, I can already think of some parts that will need to go or be edited heavily. It's pretty good right now, IMO, but it still needs some work. All I can say about the story itself right now without spoiling too much is that it is quite dark compared to the last two and deals with trust, unity, that sort of thing, between those who hated each other and now have to work together to survive. It's not extremely dark, but still quite a bit darker than the last two.

However, I am putting off editing for now to work on the sixth Glatorian Chronicles story, which will star Branar, as I have mentioned before. This is mostly to distance myself from the story so I can edit it more efficiently later on, plus I've been wanting to write this short story for a while now. After that, though, I will officially begin editing AUA at least two, possibly three times, depending on how satisfied I become with it when I finish editing it twice.

So, having been writing and rewriting AUA since July of last year, I am extremely happy to have finished the writing stage at last. Feel pretty happy with myself right now.

BTW, the sixth GC wil be called New Beginnings, not Escaping the Silent Death or Final Confrontation or whatever I said it was earlier. I changed the name primarily because it fits the new story much better than the last two, mostly because of how the ending is. Also, I'll probably be getting NB up sometime this week, so keep your eyes on the Short Stories forum for the sixth GC .

-TNTOS-