I finished going over TWH and at least managed to work out a general game plan going forward (albeit with no actual story progress), then I went through proofing the Space Arc shorts and went on to Tico1. While story progress on TWH would be ideal, I am at least doing something productive. At the rate I’m going, we probably won’t have a story update this week and I’ll just move on to EM3 next week. I’d like to have something more interesting to report, but expect more of the same for the time being. Stay tuned.

I continued to proof TWH and I might’ve finished, but there were festivities of the day to attend to. In the evening, I started sweeping the Space Arc shorts, which will lead to me proofing them once I’m done with TWH. What about actually writing on TWH, you ask? Well, as soon as I figure out how to fill the gap between where we’ve left off and the final few chapters, I’ll get right on that. Will it be done in time for the weekend? Stranger things have happened, but I wouldn’t advise holding your breath. Stay tuned.

I finished my sweep of JJ2 and started in on TWH. I’m hoping that the reread will help open up the path I need to go forward. Perhaps I should’ve focused on that in the evening, but instead I found myself making adjustments to the tags in a lot of the entries here. There were some changes I’d made since the time of those posts and for archival purposes, I wanted to make sure they were properly accessible. For instance, both EM and JJ were originally written without plans for sequels, but now that sequels have been written, it would stand to reason to think of them as EM1 and JJ1, so I made a point to add tags for both. Also, it was interesting going back over the record of my progress 8, 9 years ago. Hard to believe it’s been so long. Also, as far as progress goes, some things never change. Anyway, I’m going to try brainstorming while doing further adventures with the spellchecker. Stay tuned.

I continued my adventures with the spellchecker with particular focus on RttW and TWH. Speaking of the latter, I plan on doing a proof sweep like what I’ve been doing with all the Cross Arc stories, which I’m hoping will get me in the right headspace moving forward. Stay tuned.

I had a busy day. Not only was I implementing all those edits I’d been collecting over the week for TG, JJ1 and JJ2, but I also decided to actually make use of my word processor’s custom dictionary (a practice I fell out of because I got tired of starting the process all over again every time I had to migrate to a new machine). In this process, I caught some typos that would’ve slipped past me otherwise, not just in the three stories above but also in CeleKing1-3, EM1-3 and NagaTen. Just dealing with the Cross Arc was enough to keep me occupied for the time being, but I’ll deal with the other Arcs in the near future.

While I was doing that, I made a significant change. Well, it’s significant behind the scenes but only required one or two changes in the stories themselves. You see, back when I was writing CeleKing3, I decided that it would be simplest to use the year of adoption for the designation of Imperial weapons, i.e. the P777 was adopted in NE 777. However, CeleKing3 originally took place in NE 723. Yes, I could’ve just changed the designations of all the Imperial weapons, but instead I decided to shift the whole series one hundred years into the future. This might seem like a drastic step, but it actually made sense with the wider lore of the Cross Arc. You notice how there’s no mention of the Hybrids in the CeleKing series? Well, if I set the series after NagaTen (NE 745) and EM3 (NE 767), you can imagine a very good reason for that. Since there’s no mention of Hybrids in even later storied like JJ2 (NE 968) and TG (NE 1032), it starts to paint a bit of a picture. That being said, instead of changing a few weapon names in a couple chapters of CeleKing3, I had to go into the peripheral materials and change all the citations in the encyclopedia, timeline, genealogies, etc. Most of it was just applying a 100-year adjustment to the dates. I didn’t add any new members to the Imperial Family, though. Now the Yuanguang Emperor reigns for a whopping 167 years, but with juvenation therapy, it’s not all that wild. He dies at the age of 266, but Wuzong (who Yasuko killed in CeleKing2) was still rather peppy at 231 (though Erdi’s juvenation therapy had improved by then, so that makes a difference). Another significant change is that Princess Anmei (wife of the Yuanguang Emperor’s brother) wasn’t killed during the purge of the Sun Faction but instead in an assassination attempt on the future Emperor Wude. (She still gets posthumously honored as Empress Bian when Wude takes the throne, and it prompted me to add a whole thing where Wude’s successor Wuzheng was the son of a concubine and all the mess that led to. Fun times.)

I think I may start doing sweeps in the Space and Tellus Arcs and see what that brings up. I’ll then try to gear myself to focusing on TWH next week. Hopefully there won’t be any more head trauma cramping my style. Stay tuned.

I made some more headway in my proofing of JJ2, and though I meant to start implementing the edits I’d been making over the course o the week once I got home, instead I got wound up in getting the wiki project I mentioned before underway. I’ve got a fair bit of work to do before it can be unveiled, but things are already starting to come together. We’ll see what mischief I can get into over the weekend. Stay tuned.

As I continue to heal from my injuries, I managed to finish going through TG, go on to JJ1, then start on JJ2. Once I’m done with JJ2, that’ll take care of all the stories currently available in the Cross Arc. Perhaps I’ll go over the Tico series next. Actually, I’d like to start making story progress again, so maybe I can try a bit of that, but I do need to get all these corrections implemented. If only the office productivity expert will let me work. Maybe when she decides to take a nap. Stay tuned.

Well, I had a bit of a mishap on Monday. Took a bit of a tumble on my bike. Jacked up my legs and both wrists, tore up my hands, and even got a decent crack to the noggin. I spent half the day in the hospital because some nervous Nellies think a head injury is something to be concerned about. As you might imagine, I didn’t get any story progress done, or much of anything at all. Because I’m a schmuck, I’m not letting my injuries keep me from work, but I haven’t been able to focus on TWH like I was planning. However, I have been making some use of my time by starting to go over Tzipi’s Garden and check it for errors like I’ve been doing for other stories lately. (Chapter 9 is particularly a mess.) Hopefully I will get to feeling well enough to really focus on what needs doing for TWH, but I’d say don’t expect a chapter this week. I may be doing good just to do the proofing. It’s still better than nothing, though, right? Stay tuned.

I didn’t make any story progress, but I did do a fair bit of work in the peripheral materials for the WttW series. It’s got me thinking about ditching the old forum on the site and replacing it with a wiki. It would go a long way toward making the extended content available to the audience. One thing among many to think about.

In other news, I’ve noticed a long-standing issue where the site’s CSS wasn’t being parsed by Chrome. It wasn’t until I was looking into the site’s SSL that I discovered that I needed to add a separate reference to the HTTPS link, and now that that’s done, the problem is solved. That being said, I still need to think about updating the overall code, maybe modernizing the design a bit. I definitely need to do something to make it more user-friendly on mobile. Things to do, things to do. Oh, yes, I also need to be switching gears to TWH. I’ll be honest with you, though. I’m a bit stuck on the upcoming chapter, so I’m not terribly confident I can get it together by the weekend, but we’ll see. Stay tuned.

As noted in the previous post, I’ve been kept rather busy of late, and while I may not have been able to sit down and focus on story progress, I have managed to continue my scans through EM3 and then NagaTen. I then had to implement all the changes across EM2, EM3 and NagaTen. (Remember that I have to apply the changes to the original manuscript, the offline HTML backup, and the online version.) Loads of fun.

And of course amidst all this, I have work at work and my resident office productivity specialist at home interfering with me getting to dedicate time to actual writing. Still, it is what it is and at least I’m not left entirely empty-handed, as editing is an important part of the writing process, even if it’s edits done to stories that have been posted for months or even years. Anyway, we’ll see what I can accomplish over the weekend. Stay tuned.