Hello friends and the occasional relative.

Unbelievably, I am sick again. Kicked in yesterday, and now I have a hot head full of cotton wool, where thoughts sluggishly drift and dissipate. It is a huge pain in my backside, but for today, medicated up to my eyeballs to manage symptoms as best I can, I shall persevere.

So, before getting sick (but I could tell something was coming—had that tingle/tickle of something in my head telling me something was up, and my wife was already poorly, so the writing was on the wall,) I wrote another two chapters this past weekend. Yay!

Now, one of those chapters was a deviation from my Really Detailed Plan™, because I realized I needed a break in the rhythm of the story, and by shifting focus, managed a nice character moment and interaction. Pleased with it.

I’m kind of going by feel in this book, even with the plan™, as rather than having everything intellectually nailed down in a vast flowsheet of intricate detail (don’t imagine I had one of them before, btw—but I did have OCEANS of notes and ideas to refer to as I went), I’m letting the gaps be filled organically as I go, with what feels right at the time, given my previous edits, and understanding of where the RDP™ is taking me. I want to see how that unfolds.

This new chapter of course means I am back to a projected final count of 33 chapters.

So after writing those two I am 66.66666(and more)7% of the way through this process. Sweet. Still no progress bar.

And at 2/3 of the way through, my word count is 46K, so if I stick to that kind of production for the remaining 11 chapters, I’ll be looking at 69K once done. Way shorter than my previous efforts, which was a challenge I set myself. I have had thoughts about adding color and detail here and there to make the society more lived in, so that may add a bit to the total count, but again, only if it serves story and character, not just extra detail because it might be cool. You guys might not want to be reading a Gazetteer. I had a few of those back in the day, D&D style. Think I sold most of them. I might still have the old box set of World of Greyhawk though. It was so bare bones in comparison to later efforts, and we loved it and had great adventures there, so you don’t always need exhaustive detail, is what I’m saying. Mostly to myself.

Anyway, that’s where we are now. Talking to my doc soon. Hooray.