![\"\"](\"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/Tigger-I-heard-shots-10-26-2019.jpg\")
<\/p>\nNewBook is now over 100 pages.\u00a0 It was chugging along\u00a0 fairly well, but then…it was delayed when my horse Tigger, who is a 14.3 hand Arabian with minimal jumping experience, decided to run flat out toward a five foot three inch pipe framed fence and jump it.\u00a0 Both he and the fence came off worse for the experience.\u00a0 He broke the top pipe at a weld, was thrown backwards (landed on his back) and then at first could not get up, and when he got up was lame in his right hind…but then took off again until finally stopped in the next field.\u00a0 He had a through and through gash of his upper lip, gashes in his neck, chest, upper neck, left hind leg near the stifle, both knees…he was a mess, dripping out of nose and mouth, standing shaking on three legs.\u00a0 Not to worry…he’s now home from two weeks in the horse hospital, and nothing broke.\u00a0 Not his nasal bone, his jaw, his neck, his back, or a leg.\u00a0 His right eye had damage to the cornea, but it healed up with treatment.\u00a0 Everyone who saw him that first day and night was amazed.\u00a0 He was X-rayed in many places.\u00a0 He’s still lame in the right hind, but moves better every day so I have hopes of a complete recovery when all the soft tissue damage heals.\u00a0 I can’t say enough good about Brazos Valley Equine Hospital at Salado, whose vets and staff were incredibly supportive of me and Tigger both.<\/p>\n
But that slowed down the writing until he got home, because I was on the road to\/from the vet’s a lot, or doing other related-to-Tigger things.\u00a0 He’s getting six small meals a day and free-choice hay to encourage weight gain without stomach problems, since he’s also locked up in the barn and one small exercise lot so he can’t go fast, and he lost quite a lot of weight the first two weeks.\u00a0 Here’s how he looked this past Saturday when he’d been home three days.\u00a0 The injured hind leg is nearest the camera but he’s putting weight on it.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, the book…as I said, over 100 pages.\u00a0 It got a new opening scene this morning because I wanted to put those characters onstage earlier in the story.\u00a0 Here’s the snippet:<\/p>\n
Location: Vatta house in Port Major<\/p>\n
Secrets.\u00a0 The house was full of secrets; the entire family was full of secrets. \u00a0The twins knew most of the secrets, they were sure, but knowing a secret did not necessarily make it not-a-secret where the adults were concerned.<\/p>\n
……………………………………………………………………………………………..<\/p>\n
These are Jo’s twins, Justin and Shar, no longer little children but on the brim of adolescence.\u00a0\u00a0 Very bright, very curious, but they’ve been overprotected by Stella’s mother Helen, so they don’t have the kind of background both Ky and Stella got from their families.\u00a0 They are tired of being overlooked, expected to sit and wait for life to come to them.\u00a0\u00a0 They’re fun to write.\u00a0\u00a0 Also early in the book, Ky as she retires as Commandant (finally, she thinks) and Rafe, about to start life again as civilians, Stella and her mother, who wants Stella to take the twins (Stella is concealing from her mother her new situation, which is having Benny Quindlan in the house with her) and Helen’s birth family the Stamarkos bunch, who are…well, you’ll find out someday, if this book holds together.\u00a0\u00a0 And horses have appeared in this book.\u00a0 they may or may not stay, but there they are, so far background to the twins.\u00a0\u00a0 There’s one set of villains.\u00a0 There’s a reappearance of some people you’ll know from the previous Vatta’s Peace books, and the disappearance of a few I wish were still around but…they aren’t.\u00a0 The world changes, the actors leave the stage to argue with one another in the celestial green room.\u00a0 The *real* plot is just beginning to bulge the top of the pool of possibilities, but I can’t see any of it yet.<\/p>\n
So in time it will turn into something, though I’m not sure what.\u00a0 Something Vatta-ish.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
NewBook is now over 100 pages.\u00a0 It was chugging along\u00a0 fairly well, but then…it was delayed when my horse Tigger, who is a 14.3 hand Arabian with minimal jumping experience, decided to run flat out toward a five foot three inch pipe framed fence and jump it.\u00a0 Both he and the fence came off worse Read More…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,10,5],"tags":[17,7,6],"class_list":["post-497","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life-beyond-writing","category-the-writing-life","category-vatta","tag-life-beyond-writing","tag-the-writing-life","tag-vatta-universe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/497"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=497"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/497\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":499,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/497\/revisions\/499"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}