Chapter Twenty has been posted

Chapter Twenty is up.

Chapter Twenty-One is completely written and about one-fifth paid for. Chapter Twenty-Two isn’t.

A warning: Due to having spent far too much time moderating comments from spammers who post nothing but “Nice site!” or “Cool site!” and a link back to their deliberately-misspelled (to make it harder to block) website, I am seriously considering blacklisting the word “site” entirely. If I do, and you try to post some harmless comment using that word, it will disappear unseen into the bit bucket. My apologies for the inconvenience; if you substitute “page” or “cite” or some such approximation, you should get through.

Thanks for your understanding and your support.

19 thoughts on “Chapter Twenty has been posted

  1. That works.

    I’m reluctant to actually enforce this, since I’m afraid it would mean losing words like “opposite,” as well — I’m not sure how carefully the blacklist software distinguishes.

  2. Nice chapter, with interesting complications. And it ends with a cliffhanger. Did you write for the TV show Alias? LOL

  3. I suspect with this diversion, Emmis will barely be able to obtain honey by noon next day… but might there be unexpected benefits to still having the Assassin around? E.g., “you won’t get your honey tomorrow morning if this guy kills me”?

  4. Since name changes are (were?) being considered, anyone else think Ildirin and Ithinia are to similar ? (OK granted it is just the starting letters look similar and the words are the same size)

  5. Unfortunately, both Ildirin and Ithinia have appeared before, in Night of Madness, so I can’t change either name.

  6. I am curious, Lawrence, whether you have ever mentioned the petrifaction spells previously, and if you have, whether you used the word petrifaction or petrification. I know I used petrifaction in the blog before you used it in the book, and it made me wonder whether I had any influence on your choice of words, even if only a little.

  7. It’s always been “petrifaction.” It’s been mentioned before, and I have it here on a note-card I wrote in 1979, so no, I’m afraid you weren’t an influance.

  8. Speaking of the stone spell, it looks like the casting is the same as in the NIght of Madness for killing the warlock (can’t remember his name 🙂 ) at the end (dip the athame into a liquid). If it was an execution, why didn’t the guild use the irreversible version ? Granted, he fell to the ground and was broken into pieces, so the point was mute, but they didn’t know that was going to happen.

    I guess this gives all the ‘benefits’ of an execution while still allowing a final appeal if they make a mistake?

  9. That was a super chapter. I have a hunch that stick-man is about to get his neck throttled by an invisible protector, which is friggin’ cool.

  10. Y’know, looking back, I’m not sure why the Guild used Fendel’s petrifaction instead of Bazil’s in Night of Madness, but I would say it had to be either that they wanted to keep the option of appeal open, or it was faster.

    I don’t remember for sure which I had in mind when I wrote it. Maybe both. But the possibility of appeal makes sense, because if they just wanted Faran dead there were lots of ways to do it.

  11. This probably belongs under chapter 19’s blog entry, but it just now surfaced in my brain: all of the chapters use Emmis as the viewpoint character (albeit third-person), *except* chapter 19, which has Ithinia as the viewpoint character.

    I had a nagging feeling something was weird in chapter 19, but I only just now realized it, as the viewpoint switched back to Emmis.

    I’m not sure what can be done to fix this, if indeed it need fixing — there seem to be expository reasons why Ithinia is the viewpoint character there. But it’s still a trifle jarring, since the viewpoint has been consistent up to that point.

  12. I hesitated about that, but decided to go with the viewpoint shift. I may reconsider in the second draft. Or there may be other chapters from other viewpoints yet to come.

  13. I didn’t find the change of viewpoint jarring, BUT I knew it was coming from reading the blog (or was the the board?). I like stories with multiple viewpoints, anyway.

  14. I found the viewpoint shift mildly jarring, but not especially so. When Ithinia opened the door, and the characters were described as if we had never seen them before (except Ildirin), it was just enough for me to consciously think, “Oh, I see. This part is written from Ithinia’s POV.” Then I resumed reading.

    Despite being pulled out of the story for a moment, I rather liked the contrast. It took a well-understood situation and made it fresh again. I also found it amusing that Emmis seemed a lot brasher from Ithinia’s POV. I’m not sure how much of that is because we were “hearing” another person’s thoughts, and how much of it was an unreliable narrator at work — the rest of the book may have been filtered through Emmis’s perceptions.

  15. I just realized that people are still commenting on previous posts. I stop looking at the previous posts and comments whenever a new one is posted. I wonder what kind of mischief and mayhem I am missing.

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