I pretty well finished Xorgoth’s Chapter 5 and just about finished his epilogue as well. You might be wondering why I’m doing latter chapters before the earlier ones. There’s really nothing particularly clever about it. You see, OpenOffice Writer’s word counter doesn’t always work like it should, so I have to select the entire document to get an accurate count. This leaves me at the very end, so when I’m scrolling back up to the chapters I need to write, the later ones come up first, so I tend to just start there. You see? Not clever at all. Actually a bit of a dumb reason. However, sometimes the beginning and the end are clearer than the middle, so that can have some influence as well. I guess this means Xorgoth’s section is the one I aim to finish this week. May be a bit of a tall order. I have three more chapters to go once the epilogue is finished. I’ll make a stab at it anyway. Stay tuned.

I made more progress on Xorgoth’s Chapter 5 in TTWC2. A little more of a push and I’ll be done with it. I’ve also written a number of reviews. I may actually have my backlog all knocked out in a few days at this rate. Now I’m trying to think of themed events to bundle them. Things to do, things to do. Stay tuned.

I wrote a little on Xorgoth’s Chapter 5 and epilogue of TTWC2 and penned a few more reviews. On the latter note, I was queuing up movies and I noticed that this new thing with the reviews was affecting my choice. Before, I was just looking for movies I hadn’t seen and thought might be interesting. Now I’m thinking more in terms of “This’ll make an interesting review.” I have to sometimes suppress my inner masochism and not choose movies I know will be terrible just so I might get a more acerbic review. That’s to say nothing about movies I’ve seen and hated but fall outside my six-month window. There’d have to be some sort of premium for that kind of service. Anyway, that’ll do it for now. Stay tuned.

With things settling down, I was finally able to get back on task and do some story-based writing. I made some progress on Ophis Python’s Chapter 3 and Xorgoth’s epilogue of TTWC2. My goal is to finish at least one of the three sections of TTWC2 I have left this week. I think I’ll push to finish TTWC2 before going back to work on TTWC3. I have 11 more chapters to go, most of them already partially written. I believe with some concerted effort, I can push through fairly quickly.

In other news, I was also writing quite a few reviews. I’m building up a rather comfortable buffer, but I need to pay some thought to rewatching some series and such to add some variety to my content. I am, after all, not just about movie reviews. We’ll see what happens. Stay tuned.

I pretty well finished Ophis Python’s Chapter 2 of TTWC2 and did some work on his Chapter 3 as well. I also did a lot of work in the Cross Arc peripheral material, filling out more details of the Imperial family tree and so on. Also trying to hammer out the plot of the Aether War series. I whipped up the idea to serve as the flagship for the Cross Arc, but it’s really not like other flagships like KoG and Tico in that it wasn’t truly what launched the idea or what I’m leading with. My primary interest is in the era after the events of the Aether War, but I really should give the basis for it. Things to do. Stay tuned.

In my flurry of review writing, I was neglecting the writing that should be my primary focus. Though a little under quota, I did some writing on Simona’s epilogue of TTWC3 so I’d have something to report. As the reviews are just a side thing, saying I wrote 21 of them yesterday shouldn’t count as the sort of progress I report here. That puts me about a fifth of the way into the list I’ve drawn up. I’ll certainly have that buffer I was looking for. I suppose I might as well follow this obsession to its conclusion. I’ll just try to make time for my main writing while I’m at it. Stay tuned.

I spent the greater part of the day crunching number and pretty well resolved the Notian theater of the Trident War. That’s 32 engagements over a period of seven years and thousands of fatalities just counting combatants.

I also did a lot of jumping around, writing stretches of dialog and such for a number of chapters in TTWC3: Rowland’s Chapter 3,  Simona’s Chapter 5, Carpos’ Chapters 4 and 5, Scipio’s Chapter 5, and Mab’s Chapter 4 and epilogue. Now that the logistics of the Sixth Battle of Iakobin have been sorted out, perhaps I can make my way through Rowland’s Chapter 3 and move on down the line. Stay tuned.

I did a little writing on Rowland’s Chapter 3 of TTWC3, but most of my time was spent in the peripheral materials. I cited a number of troops under Rowland’s command and I’m having to go back and work the numbers to see that it’s actually accurate. You see, I originally just had statistics on relative troop strengths by year, but I’ve been working on a complete battle record for more accurate calculations. I may or may not have said this before, but I don’t believe in throwing out numbers at random. If I cite some figure, there’s going to be some documentation to back it up.

Also, because I was working in the peripheral materials, I was browsing my archives of older versions of my files (I try to preserve copies of earlier versions after a major change, such as my first and second compression of the Tellus Arc timeline) and I found myself writing a bit on The Knight’s Twilight. Having spent so much time on the Trident War, I’m starting to miss our friends in Gladius. I can afford the occasional detour, but now that I’m putting Tellus Arc stories on weekly serialization, I need to stay on target. I’ve got a few months of lead time, but that could get used up rather quickly if I don’t stay on top of it. Stay tuned.

I pretty well wrapped up Scipio’s Chapter 1, then got through Carpos’ prologue and Chapter 1 and did a little work on Rowland’s Chapter 3 of TTWC3. I went ahead and deleted the remaining chapters from the original version, so I’ve got a fair bit of ground I need to recover, but I think I’ll try going straight down the line for a bit. If I can at least finish the first couple sections, it’ll give me a bit of an anchor for my continued work. I started to think that I may not be good with villains given the trouble production of TTWC2, but I find Carpos incredibly easy to write. Perhap’s its a matter of anthopocentrism, but even though none of TTWC2’s cast are fully human, they’re rather heavily anthropomorphized. I dunno. These are questions I can ponder as serialization progresses. In the meantime, stay tuned.

I wrapped up Urgill’s Chapter 1, Garm and Scipio’s prologues and made a little progress on Scipio’s Chapter 1 in TTWC3. At the rate I’m going, it looks like I have nothing to worry about on the wordcount front with TTWC3. I expect the final tally will be in the 80-100K range. Yes, I know I’ve said that I’m not going to fuss over the wordcount of TTWC2, but it still bothers me that it’s turning out so short.

Part of me considers reworking the series into a chronological telling, but that would destroy the core design conceit and would require a lot more work than simply rearranging chapters. After all, can you imagine wading through nearly an entire book’s worth of introductory prologues for each of the leads, many of then taking place years before the main events of the story? The thought of doing special editions of my work feels uncomfortably George Lucasy, so we’re going to set that idea aside at present. I might try a recut as a thought exercise, but I doubt I’ll release it to the public.

In other news, I’ve been toying with the idea of doing reviews and posting them on the site. They wouldn’t be anything fancy or anything particularly in-depth, just brief run-downs of movies and such. They’d be text reviews as I’ve got a face for radio and a voice for the papers and lack a colorful enough personality to be a video reviewer (a field already filled with many more talented individuals than myself). I haven’t made a decision yet, but it might make for a nice little diversion of a weekly feature. Stay tuned.