I went through Arachne’s Chapters 2, 3, 5 and her epilogue of TTWC2, pretty well wrapping up her section and also went on to do some minor revisions to Caligo’s prologue and Chapter 1. You know, it’s entirely possible that I may be done writing TTWC2 before it even debuts on the site. Wouldn’t that be something?

I was also stricken by a bit of inspiration and did a little writing on Student of Gladius and adding to the peripheral materials. Speaking of peripheral materials, I went into the Earth Arc encyclopedia and added the kanji and hanzi renderings of Japanese and Chinese characters respectively. All in all, a fairly productive day. We’ll see what else I can get accomplished before switching back over to Tico4. Stay tuned.

I mostly finished Gamaliel’s Chapter 5 and Xenomachos’ Prologue in TTWC1. I also rewrote much of Xorgoth’s Prologue and jotted down some dialog for his Chapter 1 in TTWC2. And to mix things up, I also worked on a scene from Ladybug, Ladybug There was also a fair bit of work in the peripheral materials, to include adjusting the heights of several species, prompting successive changes throughout my character database. Dwarves and Goblins are now a good ten inches shorter on average, among other things.

Speaking of Dwarves, while trying to figure out an adjectival form of “Nanos”, I came to discover that my Greek was worse than I thought (and trust me, the bar is set rather low). While doing some double-checking, I came to realize that “Xotika” is plural, not singular. At first, I was doing a lot of search and replace, but then I decided that the proper singular “Xotiko” wasn’t quite as euphonic as I’d like. Seeing as how I was already taking liberties with the language, I opted to make “Xotika” serve as both the singular and the plural and simply chalk it up to dialect. (Any actual Greek speakers in the audience may take some offense at this, but anyone familiar with my work knows that I bend language to my purposes and not the other way around, as evidenced by the many idiosyncrasies of my writing.) I did at least eliminate the incorrect plural form “Xotikes”, for whatever that’s worth.

I wrapped up Gamaliel’s Chapter 2 and epilogue in TTWC1 as well as added dialog to Xenomachos’ Chapters 2 and 3. Beyond that, there was a fair bit of work in the peripheral materials and some piddling about in various Earth Arc stories, with a particular focus on Max Steele. All in all, I’d say this time off has been rather productive. The next four-day weekend won’t be until June, but I a couple three-day weekends in the interim. I may be too busy with other stuff to get as much writing done as I’ve accomplished this go-around, but we’ll see. Stay tuned.

I did a little writing on Sunny Day. Not a whole lot, mind you, but enough to justify this post. I also worked on putting together a spreadsheet to keep the character dialects consistent. I did something similar for Jasper and the Scotians when I was writing KoG.

Some of you may recall in the PS era how we started to see a lot of dialects show up in the localization of Square games. Some people absolutely hated it, but I wasn’t one of them. In Japanese it’s common to utilize various regional dialects as a sort of short-hand for character types (or less often, to invert expectations). This isn’t limited to stories based in Japan, as certain dialects will be used for analogous character types in fantasy worlds as well. It really wasn’t until the PS era that you started to see localization step up to reflect that more in translation. As I said, some people hated it.

Another influence was Brian Jacques’ Redwall series. Understanding the moles was often a challenge, but it certainly made them distinct. In the KoG series, I afford the reader a translation guide and more recently I provided interlinear translation in the prologue of Tico3, so I’m at least conscious of the difficulty it can pose to some readers. Shoot, as far as Sunny Day goes, an early joke is the main character he likes one of crew best because she doesn’t have an accent, so I’m self-aware enough to lampshade it. That won’t save me from those who absolutely hate dialect in stories, but I’m willing to sacrifice those readers if I have to. You can’t please everyone, after all.

Although I did most of my writing yesterday on a completely unrelated side project (over 6K words’ worth), I have much less to report that’s relevant here. I tried doing a little GottMono1 and drew up part of a scene for Sunny Day. It’s not much, I warrant, but my days off are fast approaching and I hope to accomplish more then. Honestly, I’ll probably be most productive if I stick to Tico4 and TTWC1. We’ll see. Stay tuned.

Well, I’ve had my fill of early medieval British history for a while. There’s still plenty to sort out, but I need a break. I’ve switched over to TTWC1 and got a little writing done on Ionathas’ Chapter 4. I hope to get it and Chapter 5 done over the course of the week and then I’ll switch over to Tico3.

I need to get this week’s update out. Maybe after I get back from work. Stay tuned.

You know the drill. At this point it’s mostly cleanup and refinement. There are a lot of dates to set and with the fuzzy historical record, I have to make all the pieces fit as best I can. I take some liberties, but ever since I got a more complete record, a lot of those liberties have been scaled back. Adoptions, fosterings, co-kings, and identically named children are among my techniques to sort out the contradictions. I’ve insanely extended my timeline out to the 9th Century just because that’s around the time a lot of the kingdoms I’m working with finally fall out. (For reference, I set the Battle of Camlann at 537 and start the main narrative with Constantine III’s claim to Rome in 407.)

I believe I’m starting to lose steam, though (I say coming back from a half-hour detour chronicling the rulers of Strathclyde). Probably about time I switch over to something else for a while and recharge my batteries. We’ll see what I hop on next. Stay tuned.

I showed some restraint last night. I only stayed up till 0500. -_- There’s still a fair bit to hash out, but it’s going to have to be relegated to the side because the big mystery project has been revealed and it’s going to be a lot of work. I have places to be next weekend, so the objective is to get as much done before then as possible.

I did a major shakeup to the genealogies of my Arthurian cast based on better information I’ve acquired. You see, originally I wanted Caradoc the Elder to be a Coeling through Pellam (who I made a posthumous child of Coel Hen), the odd duck left to tend to most of Britannia while his father (in my version) Pellam retires to Listenoise with Pelles and Pellinore. However, learning about actual sons of Coel Hen and the Kings in the North, I decided to separate them out. Caradoc is now the adopted son of Ynyr, the son-in-law and heir of Vortimer, son of Vortigern, keeping him in the south. Well, I made kings like Loth and Urien sons of Caradoc who inherit their respective kingdoms after he abdicates. With Caradoc now being divorced from the north, that wasn’t going to work, so I shifted Angusel, Loth, Urien and Nentres from Caradoc’s line to that of Gwrast Lledlwn, the son of Ceneu the King in the North (one of the actual sons and successors to Coel Hen). They’re now half-brothers to Meirchion Gul of Rheged who gain their territories from Uther Pendragon after he’s named King of the Britons, a sort of consolation prize for him taking the title of King in the North from their family. (Although, in Uther’s defense, he’s a grandson of Coel Hen himself and as the son to King of the Britons Constantine II, has a strong claim as Coel Hen’s successor, but this conflict will play into the story.)

All that sound complicated and convoluted? Well, that’s just scratching the surface, but that gives you an idea of the kind of stuff I’ve been mired in. I’ve conflated Uther with King in the North Mor ap Ceneu, so I need to reconcile that line with Arthur. I may or may not choose to go the multiple Guinevere route to resolve some of it. (Some versions of the stories say he married three Guineveres in his day. It would explain why the more famous one appeared later in his reign.)

Once the genealogies and timelines are settled, I’ll probably switch back to writing on either Tico3 or TTWC1, but so long as I have the drive to advance this current work, I should capitalize on it. Stay tuned.

You know the stories, ladies and gents. Another day in which I was up to 0600 poring over lists of kings and chronicles of old battles to bulk to bolster the backdrop of my Arthurian stories. I came upon some new sources that are plugging some holes and opening others. There’s a bit of reengineering left to be done, but I’m getting there. I can’t be spending as much time on it, though. Big things coming up. We’ll see if the generous air of anxiety and unease will break out into abject terror or not. Stay tuned.

I don’t need to tell you what I’ve been doing. You already know. This time I was up past 0600 working on the peripheral materials for my Arthur stories. I spent the greater part of the day scouring through all the different lines of Irish kings for a suitable candidate for Anguish, the father of Iseult. I needed someone preferably named a variant of Angus who reigned around the turn of the 6th Century. I found my man in King Aenghus of Osraige. Being on the west coast, sandwiched between Leinster and Munster, made vassalage to Cornwall plausible, thus setting the stage for the Tristan and Iseult story. I sure do go to a lot of work to give some historical basis to something some French troubadour just made up.

The quickest answer would have been to conflate Anguish with Angusel of Moray, but I wanted an actual Irish king if I could swing it. And I did, so that’s something.

I need to get things more or less resolved soon because there’s supposed to be a big project this week that I’m going to have to really devote a lot of time to. As interesting as all this work is, it has to take a back seat to higher priorities. I imagine I’ll still be fiddling with stuff over the course of the week, but I should probably start thinking about writing on the stories currently in serialization. We’ll see what happens. Stay tuned.