I know I said ‘next year ain’t looking good, either,’ last year, but jeeze.

Finished up that one year-long, over-time heavy job I was on, moved to a new place for a super-intensive pursuit for a few months at a university, commuted weekly somewhere else for a couple of months, had a few short travel jobs, moved again, went on another three-week mission, hung around for a month, and then went back out for four more months, where I am now. In the last twelve months, I think I’ve worked in or traveled through four countries and twelve states.

I think I might work too hard. It certainly makes writing on the side difficult.

So what do I have to offer other than excuses?

Well, there’s this!

Which is nice. Indian Scout Bobber in alumina jade smoke. Custom order took like six months to arrive, and then another month to fix because there were mistakes so I only got to ride it for about 30 days before coming out on my current job, but it’s fun. Shifts easy and smooth, accelerates well. Looks great. Not suited for long distances (obviously) and I have it on good authority the stock passenger seat (not shown in this photo) is uncomfortable, but otherwise quite happy with it. I have a few modifications to make once I’m done with this job, to improve utility.

But you probably don’t care about my mid-life crisis purchases, you want to hear about progress on the new book.

Maps

Well, the new city map I showed you last year is more complete, but not yet finished. It’s been useful in filling in details in the new book, though, and I’m trying to take care that what is written matches precisely with what is on the map.

For comparison, here’s a more complete version of that ‘Orchards’ screenshot I presented last year. You can see the upper portion is about unchanged, but the lower portion is all filled in with different styles of buildings with different colors, with pavement, labels, and so on.

This is a difficult side-project because, thanks to my stupid pride in insisting on doing things the right way instead of the easy way, I’m honestly trying to make this a 1:1 color map; no abstractions. That means placing every single damned building, every alleyway, every water source, etc. Of thirteen named areas of the city, seven are complete and two are about half- or one-third complete.

This map is not strictly necessary for Book II, but it would be nice to be able to include. Definitely for Book III, though.

World Anvil

I’ve also added onto my World Anvil. It has actually turned out to be super useful as a repository for worldbuilding information. I can’t keep everything in my head, and separate files of notes eventually get clunky and hard to search. Being able to categorize things how I wish, cross link to them, and plug in images helps track things. My most recent additions (in October) have had to do with tracking professions, some economic stuff, and alchemy. I played a Steam game called Strange Horticulture and got my mind working in that direction…

Any actual writing, you lazy SOB?

As for actual writing progress, it exists but is limited. I’m down to the very last chapter and, before I finish it off, I’m revisiting the entire book from front to back for continuity and completeness. It’s been long enough now that I can re-obtain ‘first impressions’ and clean things up meaningfully without relying on my editor. It’ll also be my last chance to make substantive plot changes before I’m ‘committed’ to an ending. So it’s kind of important.

Somewhat aside, I got a little shot of motivation, recently. An officer I sort-of-know overheard me talking about The Mountain Throne to someone else, bought a copy, read it in one day, and then approached this morning to tell me it was the best fantasy novel he’d ever read and had already talked it up to friends and lent it to one! He’s a big fan of Drake, apparently.

I don’t do this for money (hah!), I do it because I like to create. So little events like this may have more meaning to me than for other authors. In any case, it made my morning and got me to set aside time to make this update and get back to work editing.