I hit 120,000 words on the first draft of book 2 last night. Progress is slowing thanks to a lack of planning for these final chapters; I like to give myself a bit of wiggle room toward the end of the book since matters can change dramatically during the course of the first draft. The unfortunate downside to this is without any kind of plan in place, I am freewheeling slightly, which increases the mental burden and slows the whole process down a little. There are a few very cool parts that I am looking forward to writing, including the deaths of some characters, but a few thousand words to go before I get there.
In exciting news, a run of hundreds of special signed proofs of book one is in the pipeline at Orbit, and hopefully these will come into existence in the next couple of weeks.
More to come soon!