I managed to finish Mab’s Chapter 2 of TTWC3 and wrote a little on her Chapters 3 and 5. If I can finish a chapter a day throughout the rest of the week, I’ll be done with her section. I won’t promise it, but I’ll try to make it happen. Stay tuned.

I did a little writing on Mab’s Chapter 2 of TTWC3. A little under par, but I didn’t have a lot of energy left after finishing the latest leg of the translation project. Now I get to go through a round of edits. Yay. I’ll try to make what progress I can in the time I can carve out for myself. Stay tuned.

I wrote a little on Mab’s epilogue after finishing the day’s work. I know I’m jumping around, but I just follow the moment’s inspiration. Maybe when things settle down, I can focus on a single chapter through to the end. Stay tuned.

I did some work on Mab’s Chapter 2 of TTWC3, finished the dialog for her Chapter 4 and wrote a little on her Chapter 5 as well. Finishing her section this week is certainly plausible, but my first priority is my translation project. I’ve got two more chapters to get in over the next couple days, but after that I may have a little time to breathe. Stay tuned.

If you’ve been following my Twitter feed, you already know what I have to announce. I completed the epilogue of JJ and in so doing, completed the novel, my twelfth in the nearly 15 years since I first really started writing. To reiterate my plans for the immediate future, I’m going to start in on TTWC3 and keep going through next week and from now on, TCotSL will be taking JJ’s slot in the cycle. As TCotSL is more of a novella, it should only take me a couple months to finish it. I haven’t decided yet if I’m going to go on to “The Dragon Lady’s Dark Secret” or do something else. I’ve mentioned elsewhere that I have ideas for sequels to both EM and JJ brewing, but I don’t know when I’ll put them in the queue. Something for me to think about.

As a side note, I’ve got a big translation project that’s come in, so progress may be on the light side this month. We’ll see, though. Stay tuned.

I made some more progress on the epilogue of JJ. I finished the dialog and just have to fill in the narrative and I’ll be done. A couple hours’ effort should be all it takes. Given how much of the week has been used, I’ll go ahead and work on TTWC3 through next week and then switch over to CeleKing1. I’ll be using JJ’s slot to work on “The Case of the Striped Leopard”. Stay tuned.

I’m rather fond of Simona and not just for the fanservice factor she provides. Her basic concept was inspired heavily by Pirotess from Record of Lodoss War (and you can draw parallels between Simona’s relationship with Rowland and Pirotess’ with Ashram). She was originally a comfort woman brought over to service the upper echelons of King Zanil’s forces during the Chaos Dominion’s invasion of Notos. When the Darklander advance was turned back by the Zephyrian legions, she was captured by Clovin the Knight Champion of Notos, who led the Notian remnant. It’s hard to say why he spared her, but she agreed to serving Clovin’s bloodline in exchange for her life. As mentioned in the story proper, the generations to come varied in quality, but Rowland was the first to truly earn a full measure of her devotion.

It’s rather obvious that Simona is madly in love with Rowland. She had shades of infatuation with a few of her prior masters, but it never amounted to anything. Of course, even if she had lived, the best she could’ve hoped for was to be some sort of mistress on the side. Maybe that would’ve been enough for her. Maybe not. It wasn’t until after she died that Rowland was willing to admit any mutual feeling, so it’s not certain if he would’ve stopped holding her at arm’s length. Ah, tragic romance…

If you compare and contrast the human-nonhuman pairings in the series, Simona doesn’t have the same leverage over her partner as you see with Solon and Xanthe or Ionathas and Corona. Maybe it has something to do with her being raised as a servant and spending her entire life in that capacity. It certainly doesn’t look good for her own will to be subjugated to that of her master, but she’s never known anything else and she’s too strictly bound to her own code of honor to go back on her oath no matter how bad things get.

It might have been fun to tell the story of Rowland’s trade negotiations with Daphne from her perspective. Needless to say, his flirting with a half-Alari Zephyrian hits just about every sore spot she has. Hard to say who was more jealous, Simona or Uriel. ^o^

I guess that’ll do for now. In seven weeks I’ll be back to cover Carpos. What a piece of work that guy is. Stay tuned.