Well, I haven’t made as much progress as I thought I would’ve, but so it goes. I have made headway in TTWC1 (practically everywhere except the chapter I need to have ready for next week) and I’ve been adding to this short I started last month. I’ll give you a hint: Last month and this month had events of the same type. What type of event might that be? Why, a wedding. Now, whose wedding could I possible be chronicling? That, dear reader, is a secret and even if I do finish it sometime in the near future, I won’t release it until it’s not a spoiler. Feel free to ponder that one as you will. ^_^

Well, again I’ve inched along in Cronos’ Chapter 2, but I also wound up going over chapters for Ionathas, Gamaliel and Corona. Yes, it doesn’t help me update-wise to jump ahead like that, but it’s been a long time since I last looked over the chapters I did for them. Some required more rewriting than others.

Changes in the plot in this version have prompted me to scrap Gamaliel’s former Chapter 2 and replace it with something new that has yet to be written. Before it was just his perspective of the Fleet of Light breaking off from the main invasion force, but since I restructured the series, I’ve been moving to cut back on retelling the same events through the eyes of different characters. It loses its novelty value when overused, after all.

As mentioned in a previous post, I’ll be incommunicado for a day, but maybe I’ll have even more to report when I return. We’ll see. Until then.

More baby steps with Cronos’ Chapter 2. I do think it’s nice how this draft is a little more level-headed and builds up the suspense more. It’s a wonder what a rewrite some ten years later can do for a sequence.

I’m going to be incommunicado Saturday, but maybe that time without Internet access will actually prove to be productive. I might have a little more to say Sunday than most of these updates. We’ll see.

I’m thinking about sprinkling in some more commentary articles to spice things up a bit. I need to have more going here that just these scanty progress reports. Until then.

We have more incremental progress on Cronos’ Chapter 2, which is going to have to be ready in two weeks. I have to say, I’m liking what new character Sir Telemachos is bringing to the table. In earlier drafts, there was some real disconnect between Duke Cronos’ reputation and what was actually being shown on the page. While part of what I’m doing is better harmonizing those two, the other part is making him conscientious of that dissonance. Telemachos is proving to be a good mental and physical sparring partner and I think the Duke is going to come off much better because of it. Hopefully you’ll be seeing what I’m talking about soon.

I’ve been mostly busy with other stuff today, but I did manage to do a little work on the peripheral materials and a few hundred words on Cronos’ Chapter 2 for TTWC1. The dialog is positively dripping with irony. ^_^

I meant to get a post out yesterday, but I didn’t manage it. Well, I’ve covered a fair bit of ground since the last update. I started working on TTWC1 but switched gears fairly early on and found myself working on Junker Jorg. You may recall that I did quite a bit of work on this one during spring break and I found myself just as enraptured this past week. Not only did I finish up Chapter 2 and build on Chapter 3 and beyond, but I also spent a lot of time world-building in the peripheral materials. I really enjoy crafting histories, genealogies and stuff like that. Even though most of the material will never see the light of day, having that much thought out goes a long way toward making the world real for me and hopefully does the same for you, the reader.

I imagine I’ll continue to play with JJ, but I’ll also see if I can’t pick TTWC1 back up. I’d like to keep up the buffer I’ve established.

Just a reminder that I’ll probably have the next update on the site somewhere in the late Thursday/early Friday range. Stay tuned.

I’ve made some modest progress on Cronos’ Chapter 2 today. Some extra time was devoted to a little side stuff, reworking the parameters of the current scenario. What’s coming up will make a lot more sense now thanks to what I’ve done and it’ll also make Cronos come off a little better than he did in earlier drafts.

I’m going to be out of touch again for a few days, but maybe I’ll once again make some decent progress during that time. Stay tuned.

I’ve finished going over Daphne’s Chapter 2, having done a fair bit of expansion to it. Yes, I know my attention should be directed at Cronos’ scenario, but I wanted to finish what I started.

It’s a bit funny, really. I originally found the Ticonderoga series very difficult to plot and it entered production comparatively late despite being one of the first stories in the canon to enter pre-production.  Now I find myself having a hard time going back to doing Tellus Arc stuff. Perhaps I shouldn’t have multiple project in active serialization at a time. (Note how Everyday Magic and “The Case of the Striped Leopard” are languishing after the debut chapters I posted.) Well, part of the job is powering through the rough bits. I think it’d really help if I was more in love with the Trident War Chronicles and didn’t see them more as a stepping stone to other stories I’m more attached to. After all, if I’m not all that attached to a story, how can I expect readers to latch on to it? Perhaps I’ll follow up with a commentary piece on the experimental nature of the TTWC series and why it’s been such a pain for me. Until then.

I haven’t gotten much done today, but I have been working a bit on Daphne’s Chapter 2 for TTWC1. Of course, Duke Cronos’ section comes first and actually I had intended to work on his Chapter 2 instead, but I found myself drifting toward Daphne because I think I can keep most of her chapters, as opposed to how I had to scrap Cronos’ Chapters 2 and 3.

For Cronos, though, I do believe I’ve made a conceptual breakthrough with the character. From the beginning, I imagined him as being this great military genius, but the earlier draft of the story had him coming off as a blithering incompetent. You should already know from what’s told in Xanthe’s scenario that he all but loses Notos to the rebels before the invasion fleet sets out for the Darklands and once in the Darklands, he doesn’t survive the first year of fighting. What you can expect to see in this version is a man who showed great talent early in his career but his edge has gone dull and he comes to be aware of it. He tries to sharpen his skills and his wits, but he ultimately fails to regain his former glory. No small part of this failing is the fact that he’s up against far more formidable opponents than before, but this doesn’t click as easily for him. Hopefully I can pull off this conflict so that he properly comes across as a skilled man who is past his prime and simply outclassed. It’s somewhat awkward seeing as how he’s younger than fellow legates Aristides and Xenomachos, but they aren’t burdened by the same sort of expectations.

This very nearly qualifies as a character commentary piece more than just a WIP update, but I’m still going to classify it as the latter. Look forward to a proper introduction to Duke Cronos next week.

I can’t say I made any leaps and bounds progress today, but I have inched along here and there. I went over the prologue and Chapter 1 for both Cronos and Daphne in TTWC1, so both of those scenarios are off to a decent start. For Cronos, I opted to scrap Chapters2-4 and rewrite them from scratch, not unlike what I did for Chapter 5 and the epilogue for Xanthe. The original material for TTWC1 dates back to 2004 thereabouts and unlike the KoG series, I haven’t been going back over it several times over the years, so in many places it’s just easier to start fresh. It’s kind of amazing to see how much my writing’s changed (at least from my perspective).

I also did a bunch of work scattered across multiple short stories that aren’t likely to see the light of day anytime soon.  Some of them are actually fairly close to being ready for publication. I just need to give them the final push.

I think I’ll switch gears to working on Chapter 11 of Tico3 tomorrow. I may not have any posts here or to the main site until Wednesday. Stay tuned.