Thus Endeth Nano 2017

9500 total words on The Celestines, according to the official validator (Scrivener says 9494).
40,277 total words for Nanowrimo 2017.

Well, I didn't officially win, but I still accomplished a lot. :) Amulet II has a beginning, middle, and end now. The Celestines is off to a good start, and there's interest locally in continuing to do weekly write-ins even though November is over, so probably I'll keep working on that one as time goes on.

I think basically what most motivates me to write The Celestines is that it's my way of responding to how the real world seems to be crashing and burning, as the U.S. slowly spirals down into the Dark Ages. :p

I started off the story the way I was figuring to do it back in October. A squad of soldiers get captured and taken into a Celestine outpost. The story then follows one of the soldiers around while he finds out what the Celestines are all about. At the moment, I'm not sure there's much actual story there, so much as a guy just wandering around exploring. He's out of stuff to look at in a basic exploratory outpost though, so maybe I should ship him off to an established city soon. Either that or some plot needs to actually happen.

Most of my names for people and places are coming from a random sci-fi name generator, which speeds things up quite a bit.

Done with Amulet II!

30,751 words to complete Amulet II. 254 of those were added to Triangle II, and 503 are discard words. (The official validator says 30,777.)

This is in addition to the 55k that I wrote in 2005, though a large amount of that version is getting moved into Triangle II. Most importantly, the story now has a reasonably workable beginning, middle, and end. :)

About half of the last 5k words was about Sue Ellen. I'm not actually sure it fits where it does, but not sure what else to do with it. Almost all of her story has to happen after Antoine has left, and it can't be immediately after - but there's not really much to Amulet II after his departure, so it pretty much all gets tacked on to the end. Maybe I should split it off into a separate short story or something.

Oh well. Now I have to figure out whether I can come up with 20k words on something else. I'm kind of thinking to maybe try out that starting premise I had in mind for the Celestines...

Now I just need to tie up all the loose ends, once I figure out what those are...

25,717 words.

I'm kind of lost on how to actually finish things off, so I figure it's time to write another blog post to figure that out. Lessee, so, what's everyone doing...

Adrien's funeral went along well enough (for everyone other than Antoine), and now he's good and buried.

Mindy has all the historical and cultural artifacts she needs at this point, and doesn't need to steal more things. Her deal with Plushenko is working out fine, and Bossdon is going to attack Plushenko on schedule. None of this has anything to do with the main story so...

Antoine has been recalled out of the city, and the elder mages have promoted Chance and Felicia to replace him. They are now busy doing paperwork related to that and aren't going to get back to the art project for a while, by which time they will have lost all momentum, because it wasn't their project in the first place, it was Adrien's and Antoine's, and they will neglect to get back to it and forget all about it.

Felicia might get around to visiting the Eenin Culture Center to look for the pearl, but not in a timely manner and she won't actually find it.

Need to mention that Rita Harwood gets promoted to journer. Possibly some other random character along with her, to replace Chance and Felicia.

Nathaniel has gotten what he wanted - to distract the mages away from looking at the Golden Flame.

The Eenin are happy again. No one is coming to steal their stuff after all, as far as they ever knew.

According to my original notes, Sue Ellen was supposed to have been freed from Antoine when he left, and been passed over to Mindy. That's actually a whole extra side story that I completely forgot about. Maybe I should figure out how to put that back in... Sue Ellen does come back up in Myan.

Maybe need a scene about Jacob returning to the university after he finds out Antoine has left.

I also need to rewrite the spirit cougars in Temple. They really aren't anything at all like the spirit wolves. The wolves come about when humans are bestowed a fire petal from the Golden Flame. There are no actual wolves in Aunlania - the spirit wolves got there because of Edward.

The spirit cougars, meanwhile, are all from actual cougars. Their views and outlooks on life are very different from human norms, and this is reflected in how they communicate (to Janis, it was mostly in riddles). I'm probably going to have to redo Iorli from the beginning.

I need to add something about the lemming basket back in Amulet I, assuming I hadn't already (I might've done that actually and just forgotten about it). And figure out what chunks of Amulet I v2 about Hidden Glory I can salvage, and where to add it in Amulet I v3 part 2.

Bottom of Day 20

23,291 words.

This is not turning out to be a very wordy Nanowrimo for me. At this point I'll be happy if I get to the end of Amulet II. Which is likely within the next 5k words or so. Of course, I thought that I'd be done by 20k words, and then ended up going off on lots of roundabout tangents, and that might happen some more...

I've written most of what I said I needed to write in the previous post at this point. Haven't got back to the lemming basket, not sure if I will or not. There was one snag in there, when I reread Amulet I to refresh my memory on what happened with the pearl, and noticed that Aliacorba had actually taken it with him back then. So I had to write about 300 words of Triangle II to get Janis to put it back, so that it would be in position for the mages to steal it.

Overall, this whole story feels like it's just there to bridge gaps between stuff that happened earlier, and stuff that happened later. I'll have to assume that when I come back to it again, after some time off, that I'll be able to figure out how to make it its own worthwhile tale.

Next up: writing out the fallout after the funeral, where Antoine leaves the city. The original point of the story was to get Antoine and Adrien out of the picture via clashing with Mindy. I no longer remember why they need to be out of the picture, but, well, it's what my master timeline says happened, so...

Top of Day 12

12,317 words. The standard goal by the end of today is supposed to be 20k, so I'm kind of behind... I think my personal goal is just to reach a The End on Amulet II by the time I'm done messing with it, before I allow myself to move on to work on something else.

So, lessee, where are we...

1. Nathaniel and Mindy have made a deal, where Mindy will stand up and denounce Antoine at Adrien's funeral, in exchange for a rare book from Nathaniel's collection to give to Treehouse, who is currently blackmailing her for rare local artifacts. Nathaniel just wants to see Antoine's status undermined enough that he'll get called out of the area so he will stop trying to mess with the north anchor of the binding spell.

2. Allen and Thomas both went to visit the Eenin at the same time for the same reason. Nathaniel sent Allen; Chance sent Thomas. They met each other for the first time in Branitel. The Eenin are now alerted that the mages are going to try to sneak onto their lands to do archaeological digs without permission.

3. The mages are getting ready to try a translocation spell on the Hall of Trees. What they're seeing is actually the pearl. I need it to be unburied and removed from the Hall of Trees, so, I guess during Amulet II is when it'll have happened. Not sure yet how far the pearl is going to get - not all the way to the mages probably. Eventually it needs to find its way over to Janis.

Messing with the pearl will also mess with Thomas and the sentient spirit cougars.

4. Somewhere in all this I need to put the spirit wolves back into the story. They were part of the land dispute storyline the first time, but that's mostly getting moved to Triangle II, so now they need at least a cameo or some tangential references. Especially considering that it's their totem in the second point that the mages are in.

5. Somewhere in there, should throw in that all of the other faint points the mages see on their map are amulets bestowed by Hidden Glory that have been passed down as heirlooms for hundreds of years. I guess one of the mages needs to get ahold of one at some point and comment about this.

6. Hmm. Actually, the Eenin are getting ready to send a messenger to the king to strongly remind him that trespassers aren't allowed on Eenin lands. Maybe the messenger could be wearing one of the amulets.

7. I guess I should probably figure out some backstory to that lemming basket. It was lost and buried at the site of Mindy's farm some time back during (before?) Amulet I. At the moment, the king has it. Not sure what he's going to do with it. Frank collects such things, so maybe it just ends up in his collection.

8. Jacob is basically out of the story until the end. He's not going to want to go back to the university until Antoine has left.

Top of Day 4

4094 words so far.

Adrien is dead (well, "dead") and out of the story.
Sarabelle has found out from Felicia that they've spotted the north anchor point, and is going to tell Nathaniel.
Felicia is going to the library to research translocation spells, which she will eventually present to Antoine.
Chance has issues of conscience regarding Jacob.
Thomas is going to talk to the Eenin about how the mages are planning to show up and excavate their sacred lands.

Stuff needs to happen, that causes Nathaniel to decide that the best course of action is to let loose Mindy on Antoine.
Somewhere near the end there's going to be a funeral scene for Adrien.

I guess I'm at the "stuff needs to happen" part and kind of stuck on what to put there.

At the starting line for Nanowrimo 2017

I've managed to read Amulet II in detail and make some notes. Broadly, about a third of it is getting moved to Triangle II.

Specifically, the parts about land disputes that I was originally just going to cut for being boring. It turns out that in there was my perfectly plausible motivation for Janis to set up her culture center, which is what Triangle II part 3 is supposed to be about. I will probably still change the details so that they're less boring, but the general gist is that a real estate developer wants to turn portions of sacred native folk land into a suburb, and the native folk need to unite to stop that. It will also be a good time for Amato Bordoni to have met Mindy in the first place, since that's about when he first appeared in the area.

The rest of Amulet II then just becomes Antoine and Adrien collecting magical artwork, discovering that some of it is on Mindy's secret farm, and trying to convince Mindy to let them onto her farm. While they're doing that, they veer uncomfortably close to Nathaniel's north anchor point, which would be why he wants to get rid of them, which would be why he would've told Mindy about Antoine's dirty secrets from his past so that she can embarrass him in public and cause his superiors to recall and reassign him.

There are hints in there about how Mindy has problems of her own with smuggling rare artwork to please a faction in Myan. I was trying to come up with a reason why Mindy wouldn't've just handed over (or sold at exorbitant rates) the artwork she found on her farm. So that needs to get more fleshed out and will tie into stuff that happens in Birthright and possibly also Fall of Myan.

There are also character bits about Thomas and Jacob getting to know each other better, Felicia getting introduced in general and to Mindy, Chance and Sarabelle being friends, etc. Some of that needs to be reworked, but the general gist should stay the same.

There's also the matter of the portal into the fae realm that the mages discover, and whether they're going to do anything interesting about it at some point in the story. At the very least, this would've been when Felicia first saw the Golden Flame, which means in Temple she would've known about what and where it is (so, more revisions to Temple). I'm kind of thinking I can't just leave all of that hanging while the plot twists away from it and never goes back... is Amulet II the best place to reveal all the details about Arthur Glorian? I'm not sure. Maybe it's as good a place as any, since I'm not sure what else Amulet II is good for. At the moment it kind of feels like a filler story. It would probably have some strong effects on all the books that happen after it though.

Finally, my current thought about Triangle I from Antoine's perspective is that the poisoning of Frank was an accident after all. That would make things simpler than coming up with some sort of complicated plot about it. What he was trying to do was establish a secret control mechanism on Frank, unbeknownst to Frank and Henry, that he could activate whenever Frank was asleep. That would've been his way of fulfilling the assignment to gain a foothold on the king. Only, it went wrong...

I'm not sure how to proceed with all of that worked out. The obvious next step is more a matter of revision than writing anything new, and I'm not sure new writing is going to come anywhere close to 50,000 words. I might also put some more work into Triangle II this month to round things out.

Thinking about starting to think about prepping for Nanowrimo 2017

It's almost time for Nanowrimo 2017. My plan is to rewrite Amulet II. It and Temple both need to be redone, and I did Temple last year, so it makes sense to take a stab at Amulet II next.

So of course most of my fiction thoughts lately have been about The Celestines. I have the beginnings of a story premise worked out. A squadron of soldiers on the losing side of a battle for a planet find out that they're the only ones still alive. They get captured by the winning side, taken to the Celestine exploratory outpost, and slowly assimilated into the Celestine way of doing things. It would introduce the Celestines in a gradual way that readers could follow along, before getting to anything epic. I can already tell this'll be the beginning of another massive series...

I guess I could always try to do both. I've worked on two separate stories before, though in past cases I took a ton of time off work to do it. Not sure I'll be able to do that this time. I guess I'll figure out what I end up doing right before the starting line...

Camp Nano April 2017 Summary

1348 words toward the Emerald Sword story.

I'd originally figured on using the time for revisions to Fortress Launne, but when the month started, I really wasn't feeling it. So then I just started reading over stuff from the top, and the top of the file is Emerald Sword because it's a likely prequel to the rest of Fortress Launne, and I thought: hmm. Maybe I should finish that instead.

Obviously that didn't happen. I stopped before because I needed to figure out what the prophecy with the shetils was all about. I still haven't done that yet, but I did advance Flaunbere (the protagonist) farther along. They are now all standing under the magic birch tree where the prophecy part of it is supposed to start - just as soon as I figure out what that is.

Overall it was a fun little revisit. I really like the first 6k words and do want to finish it eventually. The whole thing will be probably end up around 20k words, just like every other story arc I've ever written in the Fortress Launne series.