Additions to cast

It's always gratifying when characters that are more or less spear-carriers start to grow personalities. Back when I had the luxury of writing in a more leisurely fashion, the minor cast was more developed going in: voices, faces, idiosyncracies. At the stage I'm at now - heading into the final third - the need for more spear-carriers surfaces (sort of like those time-travel stories where someone has to go back to 1969 to plant the gun under the rock in the garden so you can grab it and shoot the baddy in 2010 - who WAS Lydia trying to avoid when she ducked into that parlor and somebody handed her the note from Ysidro?) (Well, if Asher is supposedly dead, there's certain fellows who will home in IMMEDIATELY asking, er, does she have any plans for a replacement husband just yet? She being a very wealthy woman...)

July heat has cooled down into that soft moist gray weather more typical of California in June. Though I was perfectly able to work through New Orleans summers, I actually prefer this.

And sooner or later I have to go back to writing lectures about the Han Dynasty...