State of the CW

New countdown is up! Starbleached 2 comes out January 1st. And it is going to be a good one. I hope. I hope I hope I hope...

It's not too late to pick up a copy of This Found Thing for free. You might want to go do that now, as a matter of fact. Go! GO! the giveaway ends tonight! The higher we can make it go, the better.


The problem I have with writing these days is...I get it. There is a rhythm that good writing has. Once you get a good feel for that rhythm you can start to go "Gee, I need action to happen now" and know where to put it. Plotting has also gotten...somewhat easier. Sometimes I have a goal in mind. Sometimes I'm just writing until I figure I've gotten the end. It's not about the material, kids. Well, okay, sometimes it's about the material (coughMichealBaycough) but usually it's just about pacing, details and character development and making sure you haven't accidentally recreated Jar Jar Binks.

But there are times when I just don't want to do it. I'm writing a scene right now. Not for Starbleached the Second, but for the next Gray Prince book. And this scene is begging for a fight. In fact, it'll be "BAD CW NO COOKIE" if this scene does not end with the two characters having to run from the ravening horde. But I don't want to write this fight scene. I want to get these two characters back to the other place so that we can move on with the rest of the story. (BTW do you have any idea how hard it is to figure out how to do gunpowder in a late mideval setting? I am cheating horendeously, and if anybody has a good reason why a sodium/water reaction wouldn't work for projectile weapons, you need to speak up now. None of my research has uncovered much either way. Which actually stuns me, given how freaking spectacular that reaction is)

That said, I'm having a lot of fun with this one boys and girls. I'm playing with currency and economics--not trying to answer any questions, just...establishing a thing and then working out how people will deal with it--and now chemistry. Also a little biology. I have, for example, decided that Leythorne and his folks will be using a reindeer-analogue instead of horses as the beast of burden. Because why not? It's my book.

And I'm knitting again. I know. Riveting. I'm adapting a pattern from The Second Book of Modern Lace Knitting into a circular Pi shawl. Someday I will do things like sweaters and straight-forward squares, but Pi shawls are so freaking easy to chart. My only problem is deciding how many increases I want to do, and what the final border is going to look like. That's the other awesome thing with pi shawls. You don't have to work out the whole design before you start knitting. I am a VERY lazy designer, boys and girls.

Okay, there's your updates. Now I need to go have the bad guys chase the good ones for a couple of pages. 

And the vertigo is GONE. Not quite 100% but definately 90-95.