Rough Draft Complete!

Leah E. Welker
Feb 14
2 min read

Corgi carrying a large stick in its mouth, walking through a sunlit forest with orange and green foliage, creating a playful mood. — *I did it. I got the stick.* Photo credit: Alvan Nee

🥳What I've been up to

Finishing the first draft of the next book! 💃

I finished on Monday, making that a bit over five weeks of intense writing to complete 51 chapters and 183k words!

Behold the charts of proof! 📜

Line graph shows total words written over time, peaking at 183,056 by Feb 2, 2026. Dark background with orange line, data spans 90 days. — Campfire chart displaying total words over time.

Heatmap on dark background shows daily words written, averaging 4832/day. Shades from gray to orange indicate activity from January to February. — Campfire chart displaying average words per day, with brighter colors indicating more words and darker indicating fewer.

Yeah...apparently there was only one day since I started in which I did not write anything. 😅

So, what's next?

Some family members are graciously doing an alpha read on my raw manuscript while I step away from it for a few days (as hard as that is) to do some more admin stuff I've been neglecting.

🎧Such as finishing the audio for Blood of the Covenants, book six: Dragon's Child. Now that both my test listeners are done and are giving me their feedback, I can make the last tweaks, finalize the files, and upload them to the distributor. I'm hoping to finish that this week, but if not, early next week...

📝...so I can dive into editing this latest book's raw draft into a form that you guys can beta read!

🔍I hope to open applications for beta reading late March or early April, so stay tuned.

Teasers, Round 2!

Without further ado, here's the second round of teaser images.

Vibe Teaser 2

The vibes for this one are fairly accurate (the closest I could get—Midjourney did not know what to do with my prompts for this one at all). I was picturing a much simpler, spartan platform, definitely with the campfire open to the rest, but you can get the gist.

A glowing campfire on a wooden deck built into a large tree, surrounded by benches and soft orange lighting, creates a cozy, magical mood. — Hot cocoa, anyone?

Character Teaser 2

This portrait is 8/10 accurate. I wanted him to look moody (rather than stern), with more refinement in the beard and especially the mustache, but overall, I'm pretty happy with it! (Might revisit later, though.)

Illustration of a man with a beard in a detailed blue military jacket with gold embroidery, looking serious against a white background. — This dashing officer is at your service! (Just so long as you don’t ask him to do anything before his morning tea. Or after his evening constitutional. Or when it’s rainy. Or sunny. Or on any day ending in a Y.)

Hope you enjoy!