The Final Calling/The Unwelcome Warlock: Progress Report Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-One is now online. Read! Enjoy! Tell your friends! Send money!

We’re paid through Chapter Thirty-Three, just over halfway to Chapter Thirty-Four. Chapter Thirty-Two will be posted no later than Wednesday, January 19th. (“No later than”? See below.)

The first draft is written except for the second half of Chapter Thirty-Eight, and I might decide to add a short epilogue. It runs forty chapters, and about 125,000 words. I should have this draft finished in a few days, but due to the need to actually make a living I may not get to the second draft for a couple of months — I hadn’t intended to take this long on this story, and want to get something else out to market before reworking it.

At this point there’s no doubt that the novel will be finished and eventually published, but the serial is another matter — we’re still short six and a half chapters on the money end. I don’t mind dragging it out, if the money comes in slowly, but if it’s still not done when the finished book sees print, it never will be.

On the other hand, if the money comes in more quickly than expected, I’m planning to go to twice-a-week publication, Wednesdays and Saturdays. If I have more than two chapters paid for by this weekend, one will go up Saturday, as well as Wednesday — so if Chapter Thirty-Four is paid for by 11:00 p.m. EST on Friday, Chapter Thirty-Two will be posted Saturday, January 15th, rather than waiting until next week.

Will that happen? We’ll have to see.

10 thoughts on “The Final Calling/The Unwelcome Warlock: Progress Report Thirty-One

  1. Vond, Vond, Vond…. There’s an entire World of houses to choose from; Warlock House is nothing special. On the other hand, there’s only one Refuge Tapestry. Why is this bothering you so much that you’re rushing to evacuate it?

    I wonder if holding up the palace is affecting Vond’s mind, even if it doesn’t feel like any strain to himself. This behavior seems more irrational that we usually expect to see out of him.

  2. This chapter’s title should be “Hanner Takes a Nap.”

    It should be interesting to see if they wait for him to wake up. And the signs point to a large time differential between Refuge and the World.

    I’d be nice to go to two chapters a week. Hope the contributions increase!

  3. They do? The time differential is actually very small, if there is one at all.

    And Chapter Thirty-Four is now paid for, so I’ll post Chapter Thirty-Two this weekend.

  4. Oh, and Warlock House IS something special — quite aside from its symbolic value, that master bedroom is very comfortable.

    But I’ll want to address that in the second draft; thanks.

  5. In the previous Warlock novel, it is pointed out that Faran had the master bedroom kitted out very well for his own private recreation. I imagine that Vond would appreciate that kind of luxury.

  6. Of the people Hanner talks to, one thinks they’ve been about a day or two, and another thinks it’s been longer. There are no time cues there except their own biological processes, so they’re pretty much guessing. Time might flow (from the evidence of the text) as much as twice as fast in the tapestry world as in the World, but not ten times as fast.

    If the tapestry or the room the return tapestry points at doesn’t end up getting destroyed, they could eventually measure the time difference with hourglasses (do people in Ethshar have any more precise way of measuring time? water clocks, for instance?), but unless they start suspecting some significant difference, they probably won’t bother.

    I could see Vond being insistent on keeping Warlock house primarily for its symbolic value; he keeps talking about how he’s the only warlock left, etc.

  7. Maybe I misread that time differential thing. Even a 2 to 1 time differential would be important in the long run. 1 year there is only six months here, for example. Your two week vacation would feel like 4 weeks. A natural vacation spot. Most of our terrestrial vacation spots have the reverse: the vacation time always seems too short 😉

    There are a lot of potential solutions to this. Vond himself could take the attic room off the house and put it somewhere else entirely without destroying it.

  8. Matt: it may seem crazy but in a paranoid way, it makes sense. Vond does not fully comprehend what the tapestry is, to him it’s an open door that he cannot shut. I honestly hope that nothing happens to the tapestry. I honestly think that at this point Vond’s getting a smackdown. There’s simply no way anybody with half a brain is going to take a chance on him sticking around I just hope that it does not mean the (I know I keep saying this) end of Warlockry.

  9. It is interesting how Vond is so willing just to take things. He has yet to wake up to seeing others as having any rights.

    I so wish Hanner would replace Vond in attunement or Vond gain/regain a moral compass.

    The continued light touch between Hanner and his potential love interest, given how little of the novel is left, has me wondering.

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