Groaning Earth Progress

As many of you know, I'm currently working on the sequel to Escape from Devil's Head, which I've tentatively titled, Through the Groaning Earth. I've just recently finished a section of the book called The Jewels of Baba Yoth and with this latest section complete, I've hit approximately 49,000 words.

To anyone but a writer or a high school student trying to pump out the minimum required wordage for an essay, a word count doesn't mean a whole lot but most publishers look for a word count of around 100,000--which makes a healthy size novel. Through the Groaning Earth could end up a bit shorter or a bit longer, just depending on how long it takes me to tell the tale--but my word count tells me that I'm about half way through. Which puts me on schedule or perhaps a little bit ahead of schedule to complete the novel by the end of the year.