A first draft for a last book

It took a while — three months, to be exact — but I finished ahead of schedule. With a final burst on Friday, I finished the first draft of Duties and Dreams, the last book in the Second Chance trilogy.

Spanning two world wars and much of the twentieth century, the series finale completes the story of the Carpenters, three siblings who began new lives as time travelers in early 1900s. It tests Bill, Paul, and Annie like they have never been tested before.

Though the novel focuses on Paul, World War I, and France, it also spotlights other family members, the Spanish flu, and Southern California, where the Carpenters and the Lees have made a home. In addition, it introduces a new character (WWII resistance fighter Emilie Perot) and brings back two others (Steve and Shannon Taylor) from Annie's Apple, the second book in the series.

Weighing in at 86 chapters and 116,000 words, Duties and Dreams is the tenth longest of my 23 novels. I play to revise and edit it in the next ten weeks and publish the finished product by Christmas.