All, thank you for the support. Things have been progressing well as I use the National Novel Writing Month as a way to push through to the end of draft 1.

Quick Black Friday update on my NaNoWrMo progress:

Total words for November: 20,171
Days written: 25 of 25 
Total words in the book: 50,032
Still need about 300 more of plot and draft 1 will be done (will probably add another 2k in science appendix).

Then I will read it from the start and see if everything I want is in there and will start the editing process.

I will have it finished by the end of the month and will be doing a read or two myself before asking for pre editing help - don’t want to send it to a professional editor too raw.

All, thank you for the support.