I did some more work in the Tellus Arc peripheral materials and wrote a little on Chapter 10 of CoP. It’s not going to be that long of a chapter, but with all the travel and festivities this week, I may not get all that much written. I’ll try to get the update out, but obviously I have more pressing priorities. Stay tuned.

I did more work in the Tellus Arc peripheral materials while I was reading through Þidrekssaga, and as I was taking in the background for Thidrek, I was developing the early history of the region that longtime readers will know as Byrn. You see, since it’s Thidrek of Bern, I decided that the revolution that overthrew the Kingdom of Ban would take on a restorationist character, branding themselves with the ancient name of the land (with some linguistic drift over the centuries). It actually was a fun coincidence that my ersatz Russia located next to my ersatz northern Italy formerly occupied by an Ostrogothic kingdom would map to a story of Ostrogoths occupying northern Italy that also involves scrapping in Russia. Life’s funny like that sometimes. Anyway, I hope to continue my work over the weekend before I switch back to CoP. Stay tuned.

I was doing more work to square things away in the TKoH outline. I’ve committed to bringing in elements of the Nibelungenlied up to the point of Sigurd’s death. From there, I’m thinking of doing a sequel tentatively titled The Curse of the Niflungs to chronicle the downfall of the Gjukings after Sigurd’s death. There may or may not be another one or two in the offing. I realize that despite being under the umbrella of the Brynhildr Cycle, these well be more tangentially related to Brynhild herself, but it all forms a part of a wider whole. I’ll continue to work on squaring things away and we’ll see where it gets me. Stay tuned.

I wrapped up Chapter 1 of TKoH and worked on fleshing out the outline in light of the new direction I’m taking the story. With the new arc I’m planning, I’m going to have to dig into Þidrekssaga. I’ve found 1988’s The Saga of Thidrek of Bern and it looks like it’s got a lot of good material for my consideration, but it’s going to take a while to go through it. I plan on multitasking with fleshing out the timeline and encyclopedia entries as well. I also need to be calculating travel times and such and decide how much of Sigurd’s story I want to put in the novel. If we interpret “The King of Hoards” as whoever inherits Andvari’s hoard, not just Fafnir, then I should at least go through the Nibelungenlied up to Sigurd’s death. I could do a sequel with the fall of Gunnar and Atli and maybe even another with Aslaug and Ragnar. We’ll see. Stay tuned.

I didn’t get any writing done Monday, but I was simulating dialog during my commute and I’d like to think that sped up the process today. Although I came in under quota, I managed to get the dialog for Chapter 1 of TKoH finished, so just have to wrap things up a bit and I’ll be good to go. Originally, I was going to have a lot more go on in the chapter, but now I’m making it a whole mini-arc of the story leading up to Sigurd getting Gram. I should be able to get a decent head-start on the next cycle at this point. Actually knocking out a chapter early would be amazing. We’ll see how it goes. Stay tuned.

Between having a full load of work-work and conking out disastrously early in the evening, it wasn’t looking like I was going to get much accomplished (and, as you’ve no doubt noticed, I didn’t even look at anything story-related on Wednesday), but when I came around in the wee hours, I spent a good hour thereabouts working on Chapter 1 of TKoH, which built on what I’d written during my lunch break. It was respectable progress for a day, but being so close to the deadline, it isn’t half as encouraging as it’d be otherwise. Given that I’ll be super-busy Friday and that I have work Saturday, it’s a fair bet that I’m not going to make my deadline unless I opt to scale down my ambitions for what I want to cover, which I may well do. It’s slim, but there’s still some hope of getting the chapter out if I aim for something a little slimmer. Stay tuned.

I did a little writing on Chapter 1 of TKoH but most of my work was in the peripheral materials again. I’ve got a lot of work-work piling up and I’ve already messed up the October movie review feature, so there are quite a few plates spinning at the moment. I’ll try to get it sorted. Stay tuned.

I didn’t get any writing on the main story, but I was getting closer to more immediate material in my work in the peripheral materials. I could spend all day writing encyclopedia entries, but there are other demands on my time. Things are coming together, but I have to square away work-work tasks while making progress in the story. We’ll see how it goes. Stay tuned.

I did another smattering of work on the Tellus Arc peripheral materials related to TKoH, but no actual work on TKoH itself. Honestly, I could probably dedicate a few months just to the peripheral materials, but I need to get story content out, so this week I’m going to have to focus harder than what I have. Will I succeed? We shall see. Stay tuned.

As I mentioned last time, I had to knock out the grading I put off the other day, but I sprinkled in some work in the peripheral materials. I eventually tried to start work on Chapter 1 of TKoH, but after my first round of sleep, the mascot was demanding of attention and ultimately, my return to bed. As for that work in the peripheral materials, I was doing some work on encyclopedia entries and the timeline to a lesser degree. As much as I want to focus on the story itself, there’s so much work on the background to do to get everything set in place. Anyway, as you can see, I’m going to have to postpone the update to next week. I really need to get at least one story update out the door at some point. Stay tuned.