Progress -- Beacon & Palaios

I nearly finished Beacon Burning back in March, but I just haven't been able to get going again. My mom's condition continues to deteriorate and being a sole caregiver is a 24-7-365 job.

I have done a little bit of work on Palaios, which is my pre-Casanarvan world, the place where the Tazaqwayn came from. It is a place of many gods and goddesses and fiery blood sacrifices.

From this world a priest, Licas, escapes with a few hundred followers, including several warriors who become his bodyguards and eventually form the original Velnar Knights.

I know little of this world and am just feeling my way along. Recently I saw a picture of a city by a sea and recognized it as the capital of Palaios. I had not known before if Palaios was a coastal city or not. Details will come to me and I will be able to See this place much better in time. Eventually what I see probably won't resemble the picture at all, but that doesn't matter.

Candles finished

I finished Candles in the Wind (topped out at 419 pages) on Aug. 29, went back and polished up the last four inserted chapters and sent them off to a couple of my critiquers.

In working on these chapters I came across a couple of things I wanted to fix in Lamp and Darkest Hour, so I'm glad they hadn't been carved in stone.

Now I'm ready to re-start Beacon Burning. I went over the first two chapters, and they look solid. My imagination is already racing ahead to scenes and dialogue for Beacon. I have quite a bit written, not as much typed in yet as I'd thought, but I'll get there.

Also I came up with a tentative title for the collaborative Adventure in Eedo. I'm calling it The New Moon. "Moon" is always good for Eedo! And I'd had that title on my list forever. That story will need a lot of work--half of it isn't even typed and some isn't canon (The wedding springs to mind immediately. I was in a hurry and based it on Catreena's two weddings!). My partner in crime has written a fresh beginning, and I'm thinking that maybe we could even start the story further back in time, but for now, it's good.

Life has been getting in the way of writing. I don't mind the work--when hands are busy, the mind often runs free and comes up with "story"--but I've got to get my mind back to focussing on the story. I've lived so long in Valtarmelsa and in Saráy that I've forgotten what Eedo and Goffeleccee are really like. Very scary. I need to re-immerse myself, not only in the geography, which is easy, but in the culture and traditions of these two kingdoms.