Status of Fortress Launne, writing in general, and life

Well, Birthright came to a halt as I ran into problems with not knowing what happened in Triangle and by the end of Amulet I. This seems to be par for the series as a whole, so I'm not surprised. Most of the month was spent on developing Myan (i.e. the various mobster groups beat the crap out of each other) rather than on the actual alleged main plot with the magic treasure box, but I laid down a lot of good groundwork. And also worked out a few things that need to go into Triangle next year.

That will be the last of the big pieces of this series. It's set in the period when the city of Fortress Launne was first getting set up. There were three key players at the time: Nathaniel, Stranahan, and Antoine. Nathaniel needed the city plan to be an equilateral triangle inscribed in a circle due to his gigantic binding spell for the demon below, and so he dictated a lot of stuff that Antoine wasn't entirely happy with. That's the main conflict - the fact that Antoine didn't like being told where to put his university, and what he therefore does to one of the Stranahans in response, and the fallout from that (some of which came up in my failed attempt at a Janis novel in 2006, which had lots of stuff about a plague, which means it was the sequel to Triangle). (And, in thinking about this plague, Triangle II would be the actual story whereby Janis goes to fetch Aliacorba from the swamps. Because he's a medicine man with miraculous healing powers you see...).

Anyway. So the stuff that came up in Birthright pointed out another major plotline, which is: how the spirit wolves got started up in the first place. That is, at some point during the time period of Triangle, they received their totem, the Golden Flame. It almost has to have had Nathaniel's involvement, since one of the three points of the spell triangle is their sacred cavern. The totem itself - a sculpture of a phoenix - probably wasn't in Nathaniel's hands originally, and so far I'm thinking it came into Aunlania with the Stranahans. But it would've been Nathaniel (or someone loyal to him) who recognized what it was good for and how to use it.

Meanwhile, what I most want to do next with all this is piece together a coherent version of Amulet I. I have three versions of it so far. The first one can pretty much just be tossed out entirely; it was important to write it because it helped a lot when I wrote the third version, but none of the actual material is useful. So, I have two versions that are going to become fodder for the fourth version. I need to go over them and figure out what I'm doing. The troublesome part, as always, is what happened after the Duchene brothers came to the ruins of the old fort, and how Aliacorba became Tainted, and what he did in response to protect his family line. Every iteration seems to be getting it closer to the way it actually needs to be.

And, sadly, there still aren't any actual amulets in the story. Oh well.

Then there's still the Vengeance storyline that has stalled out since I switched to Fortress Launne for November. At some point Rumen is going to insist that I continue with that.

In other news, I'm probably going to take December off from fiction. There are four articles on my todo list on the nonfiction front, two at BrightHub and two at eHow. I figure one article per week should be reasonable. (There are people who can write four per day, but alas I'm not that fast.) Especially since at some point I'll have to drive back to Indiana and do some social obligation things. I also have to get back to serious hardcore job hunting - putting out apps and things so that they can be ignored and rejected. And finish sorting out all my life detritus - I got a lot done last summer, but there's a lot left to do.

What I'd really prefer to do at this point, aside from sitting around writing full time I mean, is join Americorps. If there's ever going to be a time in my life where I can make that big a commitment to volunteer work, it would be now. I've looked into Peace Corps too, which is also on the table, but I'd prefer to be somewhere with Internet access, and I'd prefer not to be a classroom teacher (which seems to be the vast majority of what they need). The main con of working for Americorps, meanwhile, is ... and this is going to make me sound like a racist... that I don't want to help American white people. I've spent most of my life in places dominated by white conservatives, and really, the concept of helping people that are just going to turn around and shun me for not being a "real American" isn't really doing it for me. (There. I said it. In public. But there it is.)

Then I found an Americorps posting that involves helping Native American elderly. Now that, I can get behind. These are the people who are poorest of the poor in the U.S., the people who live in a third world country within a first world country, and who have been ridiculously wronged (even if it wasn't my particular ancestors that wronged them). Plus, I would still have Internet, still have time to work on writing, and still be within a reasonable distance of my family - which has become a lot more important now that my sister has a daughter that I someday want to be able to afford to see. I applied for it, and it's currently my top choice of things to do next with my life.

My tentative plan from there: if things go well and other opportunities involving helping Native Americans open up, that would be awesome. If not, I'll look into Peace Corps again. If they reject me from Americorps, I'll also look at Peace Corps.

I guess on the whole I'm trying to get out of science for a while. Americorps comes with educational benefits that I could use to set myself up to do something else entirely. Peace Corps has some too, I think, and also some advantages for applying to federal jobs afterward. And maybe by the time all this volunteering work is done, the economy will be good enough for me to actually get a job again in something anyway, science or otherwise.