I’m not sure this was designed as a meme, but I ran off with the questions anyway, because I’m in a mood to be moderately introspective.

1. If you’re a novelist, how many books have you finished at least first drafts of?

Seven. Two of which are on their way to print.

2. How many of these are books you want to pretend don’t exist (so your teenage angst-tastic stories DO count, people!)?

I didn’t actually finish my teenage angst-tastic stories, though I wrote quite a bit on them. I wouldn’t quite deny their existence, but neither The Kestori Hawks nor Sunlight and Storm (numbers three and four, respectively) is fit to be seen at present, and may never be so. TKH would require obscene amounts of rebuilding, and I’m not sure I have sufficient enthusiasm to do so — though every so often, Eleanor pokes her head up and asks me to. (The fact that Eleanor, and secondarily Luke, are the characters who make me want to go back and work on it, is a telling point. Neither of them is technically the protagonist. Leonard, I mostly want to kick in the head. And at present I am not, like Dunnett, able to make you love a protagonist while simultaneously wanting to kick him in the head.) S&S I may revisit some day. I’m not sure. I think there’s something there, but in two radically different drafts, I haven’t yet found it.

3. How many do you especially like?

Depends on my mood, but generally two or three. The Vengeance of Trees (number five) is quirky fun; I wrote it in seven weeks flat, which says something about it. The Waking of Angantyr (number six) is tougher to love, but something about its grittiness and mythiness pleases me immensely. And then there’s the urban fantasy I’m trying to not call by its title because I’m working on coming up with a new one, which is the first one I wrote, and the next one I hope to sell, once I’ve given it another rewrite. That will always have a particularly treasured place in my heart.

4. How many do you have starts of (like, frex, you started, then got a better idea, so went somewhere else)?

I’ve got bits of . . . let’s see . . . twelve that I can think of. Four Winds (the S&S sequel), Manifestation (urban fantasy prequel), a title-less urban fantasy sequel, The Iron Rose (several beginnings for that one), The Changing Sea, the “Second Troy” and exploration SF novel bits, the Book-of-Kells-esque thing, the Nine Lands thing, the really old dragons thing and polarization thing and shadow-side thing . . . .

5. How many novel first drafts are you working on currently?

Actively working on? None. Noodling around with? Mostly the urban fantasy sequel, or at least that’s what I intend to noodle around with soon. My attention’s been on short stories, and on revising the first one (again).

6. How many are polished? Like you don’t think you can look at them again or you’ll explode finished?