It took about ten years from the day I wrote the first scene to the day I had the published book in my hand, but the book went through at least five drafts in that time, and I didn’t write all day every day (I had to work for a living, too!). The first draft took about two years to write, and it was about 700 pages long. That was much too big, so it took me about two more years to whittle that down to a mere 500 pages. The next two drafts brought it down to about 350 pages. Meanwhile, I was trying to find an agent or a publisher; that took even longer than writing the book! After Holiday House bought the book, I worked with Regina Griffin and Leanna Petronella, my wonderful editors there, to tighten the story up some more, and took another 50 or so pages off it. Whew!