I did some more writing on Rowland’s Chapter 3 of TTWC3. Just about to the big showdown with Medusa. I’ve been brainstorming the fight choreography and I have to account for the full range of powers I’ve given her. You see, she doesn’t just have the Stone Gaze ability, but a number of other active and passive abilities that’ll have a bearing on the fight. Yes, I pretty well take an RPG approach to the magic system and such but keep it all under the hood. Though I have no narrative imperative to adhere so stringently to the system, it gives consistency to power levels and whatnot. I should probably do some commentary posts about how the system works. I’ve got quite a bit of documentation for it, so there’s plenty to talk about. Anyway, more writing to be done. Stay tuned.

I was making progress on Rowland’s Chapter 3 when I found a character in the character glossary that hadn’t actually been used yet. (Usually I add entries for incidental characters as they appear.) In finding a place for this stray character, I wound up working on Scipio’s Chapter 5 and pretty well finishing it. After feeling so stifled with TTWC2, I’m actually enjoying working on the story again. Perhaps I need to reformulate it and perhaps I just need to accept that TTWC2 is the weaker entry in the series. I may yet craft a variant trilogy that ditches the structural conceit I’m using now and tells a more linear narrative. That’ll be a project to consider after I’ve finished TTWC3. In the meantime, I’ve got a ways to go. Stay tuned.

I made some progress on Rowland’s Chapter 3 of TTWC3. Since I’ve started, I may just forge on ahead with TTWC3 this week and pick up JJ or EM next week. I doubt I’ll get Rowland’s section done before the week’s out, but it’s a decent goal to aim for. Stay tuned.

I did a little work on Rowland’s Chapter 5 and epilogue of TTWC3. I haven’t decided if I want to keep on working on TTWC3 or not. I’ve been talking about making progress on JJ and EM for weeks now and I should probably consider it. 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.

I wrapped up Urgill’s prologue and did some work on her Chapter 1 in TTWC3. She’s certainly shaping up to be quite a different character than how I originally wrote her. I may go into it deeper when her turn at a character spotlight rolls around, but before she was just a monster hopelessly infatuated with Rowland. Now there’s a lot more going on. My work on Orguz in TTWC2 deserves a good share of the credit. He too got fleshed out much better in this version and a lot of that development extended to Urgill. I’m thinking about spending an extra week continuing my work here on TTWC3 before switching over to Tico4. We’ll see how things go. I’m so close to wrapping things up there that I should really just go ahead and make the final push. Stay tuned.