Ishta’s Companion/Relics of War: Lack of Progress Report Three

We’re still $61.00 short of posting Chapter Sixteen, and what with the holidays, house guests, and health issues (I’ve had a series of colds and bugs for almost a month now), I’m still only partway through writing Chapter Eighteen. This is further complicated by the realization that the ending in my original outline (there’s half a page of outline left to cover) isn’t very good, and I’d like to devise a better one.

But I’m going to finish this, and it probably won’t take too much longer. Posting it all… well, we’ll see, but I’m not optimistic.

I’m going to be doing some traveling, and while I’m taking my computer with me, I probably won’t have time to get all that much work done. If we do get that $61.00 in, I still may not get Chapter Sixteen posted until I get back on the 12th. We’ll see.

A minor bit of Ethshar news: The new edition of Ithanalin’s Restoration is scheduled for June.

A less-definite bit of Ethshar news: I’ve been plotting the next Ethshar novel, Stone Unturned, when Ishta’s Companion is being uncooperative. It’s beginning to feel as if it wants to be three or four separate stories instead of one big one. There would still be a novel with the main plot, but a couple of subplots don’t seem to want to merge in and might wind up as separate novelets, novellas, or even novels in their own right, though they’d still intersect the main story for a couple of chapters. It’ll be interesting to see how it all works out — but this means I probably can’t do it as a serial, even if I wanted to.

And I need to finish Ishta’s Companion first, anyway.