8,793 words. With luck, we’ll hit 10K by the end of today, although we’re also now working on publisher edits for Evergreen, so if we don’t make that, we’re fine.

We continue to wonder at what the hell point it was we started writing so much more romancey. It’s certainly not something we decided to do consciously. It’s also a hell of a lot of fun.

We also had our first-ever “Is this a fade to black sex scene?” conversation. If you’ve read Starling you know we sometimes skip sex scenes if they’re not necessary for the plot or would relieve too much tension, but fade-to-black swing-the-bedroom-door-closed for the first time characters are actually in bed together, is not a thing we usually even have to think about. We are now, which is just interesting.