Notice of Return

The last of the cleanup (though not all the reorganization) from Thanksgiving has been accomplished, and Author is back on the job.  The new book stands at just over 94,000 words now (some days lost to the holiday.)    Various components of the feast are already packaged and in the freezer.   Other components await deconstruction, division, and packaging into equal-sized lots for later use.  Some components of the feast have been released to the Long Tall Texan son for consumption at will.

What’s been going on in the book is both exploration and and consolidation. Patterns are coming clear.   They are not necessarily the patterns planned when I started the book.  Not uncommon, when a book withholds plot bombs until this far in, and then drops two of them.   Backfilling and rebalancing will both be necessary in the revision process.  It would be great if I could get the total to 95,000 words today, but that’s unlikely for several reasons.   One of them is musical–we did not have rehearsal the night before Thanksgiving, and we’re singing two anthems tomorrow morning.  I need to spend time with the music and be sure I know it well enough that a brief rehearsal in the morning will serve.

So…Ky is having to learn new things in this book as well as in the last.   So is Stella.   So is Rafe.   Even Grace Vatta finds out things she never knew about events in the past that are very alive in some memories and meaningless in others.

Thanksgiving on Waystation Huygens was something to watch from outside (didn’t have time to go in, was busy with cooking, then guests, then eating, then cleaning…)   That thing they served was NOT a turkey.  No turkey is shaped like that.   Also, at least in our end of things, all the guests do not stand up and propose a toast to the bird on the table and then pour wine on it.  And the turkeys I cook never lift their heads and spit fire.  (Yes, it could have been a hologram from a fantasy movie of their day, but it looked like that was happening.  The costumes were amazing.   Ky wore the one she was wearing in NewBook in the part I wrote week before last when (mmmph, mmmph, no spoilers!!!)   And she looked cute.  (Shut UP, Spoiler-demon)    Rafe was a Man in Tights with a Cape, but he needs a fencing coach if he’s going to carry a rapier around.   And his sidearm was out of period.   Stella let her hair down (literally), and dressed as something between Earth Goddess and Gypsy.  Grace pulled an old Elizabeth I costume out of some trunk, red wig and all, and looked regal in all those silks and pearls.  People you haven’t met yet came as butterflies, birds, dinosaurs, three-headed snakes, eighteen-headed marine worms, and historical characters from our past and our various futures.