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.