Update: It’s weird to have time to do things that aren’t Silver Circle

So, on Friday the 13th last week, I finished the last, the very last tweaks to SC #3, not counting corrections that would be made later, when feedback arrived from proofreaders. So that meant that fundamentally, this book and therefore the whole series was FINISHED. I feel a bit like Sisyphus, except for actually reaching the top of the mountain.

Then, over the weekend, I started getting corrections from proofreaders, so that gave me more to do on Sunday and I’m sure that will continue this week, but I hope and expect to be releasing SC #3: Shattered Skies on my Patreon this week sometime. Which is amazing, and though these corrections will be ongoing this week, no doubt, I am suddenly able to work on other things too.

So I thought you might like to know what’s going on with those other things, so this post is about that.

A) I read a novella! Which is not quite the first thing I’ve read by someone else in months, but close. And this novella turned out to be interesting, and since I had time, I wrote a long post about it, about what the author is doing as he puts this story together and what works and why. That post will go live later this week and I hope you find it interesting. You can read the novella if you like, and tell me if you think I missed something important.

B) I started a new novella! Maybe, probably, not sure exactly how long this story is going to go.

I know, I know, I need to finish “Midwinter” and that is on my LIST of THINGS TO DO, but I also wanted to start this other novella because once I start something, it’s usually much easier to go back to it and finish it. And now this novella is started and we’ll see where it goes.

This new novella is called “Sekaran,” and it is fundamentally episodic, which means it is perfect for my newsletter. It’s a series of scenes that each involve a meeting between Sekaran and Aras, beginning when Sekaran is nine and first meets his cousin, who is twelve, meaning Aras knows he’s a sorcerer at this point. Then they meet again the next year, right after Aras has undergone that brutal test of integrity, you remember, he describes this to Ryo in TUYO. Sekaran doesn’t know what’s happened, only that something has. In both of those scenes, Prince Sekaran outranks Aras. Then, a decade later, Aras gets his scepter and outranks Sekaran. Then Sekaran is made heir and finds out that Aras is a real no-fooling sorcerer, which is fraught, and at this point he outranks Aras. They both marry, Aras much more happily than Sekaran, so there’s that. They both have their first child, in both cases a daughter. Then Aras’ scepter is broken and that’s dramatic, of course. There’s a scene that happened at that point that you’ve never seen. (I haven’t seen it either, I just knew it was there). Then Aras receives his new scepter and outranks Sekaran. Then … possibly … a scene that steps forward in time once more, to the time when Sekaran finally becomes king and must decide whether to confirm Aras as a scepter-holder or not.

So this story is, as you see, episodic in a way that most stories just aren’t, with these big steps through time. But I thought of this while writing RIHASI because it’s so obvious that the relationship between Sekaran and Aras is complicated and longstanding, and it’s so intriguing to imagine how they must have worked out their relationship over the decades. So now I’ve written the first two chapters, and what I’d like to do is write the whole thing over Christmas break so it’s ready to go into the newsletter for a good part of next year.

C) YES, I KNOW, I also need to finish “Midwinter.” I wonder how many more chapters it will be? This week some time, in between bouts of correcting endless typos for SC #3, I will set “Sekaran” aside and finish that novella too. I sort of think it’s only two more chapters. Or three, but the last one is short. Or four, but the last two are short. ANYWAY, I need to write the rest of it and then I’ll know.

And that’s what’s going on this week!

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