It’s the beginning of May now. I had hoped to be finished with my third draft at the end of April.
Sadly, that is not the case.
I do have to factor in how it was finals week, that I’m officially graduating from grad school (!!!), and that I recently quit my job (!!!). All of these things came together in a way that it was nearly impossible to find time to work out the last few kinks in my manuscript. I feel somewhat guilty about it, but only somewhat. Life continues happening even when we have other things to focus on. Isn’t that sort of the point anyway?
I’m about halfway through the editing process. Now that my schedule has cleared up, I hope to have it for real finished at the end of the week. At that time, I’ll post a little teaser (not just the first chapter, but something juicy in the middle) and start sending it off into the great unknown. If I’m lucky (fingers crossed) and make that very lucky, I’ll have some sort of deal with an agent/publisher by Christmas.
Fingers crossed, ladies and gents. Fingers crossed.
Ren Martinez 
I am completely worried about when the school year comes. I couldn’t get any writing done during the semester ever since I broke into the upper level classes. I’m only doing three this semester though and three the next (before I test into the teacher education program), and they promise to be easy classes. Hopefully, because I just got contracted, and I need time to write, especially if I am to meet my dream of becoming a full-time writer because teaching isn’t something I necessarily want to do. I either want to be an editor or copyeditor, but teaching is just more assured for me.
Same problem here, it sucks.