Update: Moving Forward, Not Quite There

Great Writing Oh, Wait, What is this Book About Any...

Update: Moving Forward, Not Quite There

All right, I’m sure you all assumed this, but yes, I’m still moving forward with Hedesa, but no, I haven’t completed the draft. I made good progress this weekend, though, and therefore I’m now past the 210,000-word mark, which I expected, so this is fine.

Shortly, today or tomorrow, I will hit the … okay, the beginning of the climax. A new! exciting! way to begin the climax occurred to me last night, different from what I thought I had in mind — this is perfectly normal — and I’m excited to get to it and write that scene, which is great because it’s always nice to be excited about an upcoming scene, plus, as a special bonus, this scene will also set up a way to shrink the list of important characters for the next book.

Wait! I hear you say. You’re not going to kill anyone important, are you?

And the answer is: it depends on how you define “important,” and also I’m not sure, but it’s a possibility, yes. However, the shrinkage of the character list will not depend on character death. This is a different way to do that. Potentially do that. I won’t be completely sure how I’ll move forward until I get there. I mean, see above, I didn’t know exactly how I’d do this part until I got here.

Anyway, I’m on chapter 24, chapter 25 will also contain part of the climax, and then there’s likely to be a short chapter 26 — and this is all subject to my saying, Oh, oops, looks like I’m actually going to 28 chapters, but I don’t think that’s going to happen, and since I’m this close to the end, I might even be right about that.

So that’s where I am.

Plus, I’ve started 125 flower seedlings at this point, plus a tiny number of tomatoes and peppers. The next time we expect a run of warm days, I’ll plant squash and melons outside — maybe okra — big plants that will look good in the garden and not take a lot of fussing. If the weather turns cold again and the seeds fail to sprout, whatever, I’ve got plenty more seeds.

The boys go for their echocardiograms tomorrow, so I’ll be hoping to hear, “Yep, those are murmurs, but the architecture of the heart looks fine, so let’s do nothing for now and recheck in a year.” Otherwise I suppose I’ll be putting one or both on pimobendan, but, I mean, with pimobendan, hopefully they won’t show the least sign of heart trouble for years and years, if ever.

Morgan and Haydee are totally over being spayed, obviously. It’s been what, two weeks, something like that. Haydee did NOT like being restricted from running madly around with Joy, which she does every single day, but probably by this time the restriction is lost in the mists of time. Joy, meanwhile, has started chasing birds in the yard. Normal birds, such as flycatchers, which are way up there and totally hopeless. But she sucks all the rest of the girls into it by yipping in excitement and dashing around. This gets them all dashing around madly, which is great for them all.

You know, I think I’ll go post a picture of that at my Patreon. A public post, of course.

Also, I think I’ll post a few chapters of Hedesa at my Patreon over the next weeks, for the $2 tier and up. The first chapters are unlikely to change to any great degree, which I can say because I revised chapter one this morning to accommodate a later plot development, so that’s done and honestly, that chapter and chapter two are both in basically their finished form. They’re also really fun chapters and set up the entire story. So I think that’s coming up later this week at my Patreon.

Meanwhile, this has been the best ever year for magnolias. Zero frosts to destroy the flowers, but cool weather that means the flowers hold and hold — for weeks instead of days. They’re all unbelievably beautiful this year.