Chapter Thirty-Two is now online — the first Saturday chapter. From now on, I’ll post new chapters twice a week if the money comes in that fast.
I also made a small revision to Chapter Thirty-One.
We’re paid through Chapter Thirty-Four. Chapter Thirty-Three will be posted Wednesday, January 19th.
The first draft is written, except I still might decide to add a short epilogue. The novel runs forty chapters, and just over 125,000 words.
I’m not sure when I’ll get to the second draft, and I don’t actually have a contract with Wildside yet, so there’s no telling when the final version will see print.
This seems WAY too easy, we’ve still got eight chapters to go, and a nearly self solving problem isn’t really of interest.
I mean, if Vond just disappears himself then the story should have focused on a different problem.
But I doubt that Ithinia has yet finished the flying castle spell, she needed the moons to be in a state they were a week away from didn’t she?
And if Vond and his guards pass through the tapestry then people on the other side have to both deal with them, and avoid letting Vond out.
So I can still see interesting problems.
Vond doesn’t have a sense of details. That is interesting. And just moving seems not to have occurred to him.
Thank you for double release, Lawrence!
To Stephen: He doesn’t know how tapestries work. So he may think that (a) moving won’t work, since exit can be adjusted (b) simply does not want to bother searching for another bedroom.
He does know that his magic won’t work on the other side, so I doubt he’ll go there.
I don’t see how Vond has become a self solving problem. If anything by hiring guards he’s shoring up weeknesses. He’s certainly not following the soldiers into the Refuge, he seems to get that he’d be cutting himself off from his power source.
Huh, after rereading, I missed that he was leading the soldiers. How silly of him. Its still not that easy to take him given that he’s got warriors with weapons and the warlocks are unarmed, but still impractical of him.
I deleted a duplicate comment there.
I believe he says “directing,” not “leading.” Or maybe he uses both terms, I forget, but one can lead from the rear.
As for moving not having occurred to him, that was the change I made to Chapter Thirty-One, two lines addressing that.
Vond apparently hasn’t grasped that all he needs to do to seal off the exit from the Tapestry in Hanner’s Refuge is to make a significant change in the appearance of the exit (rendering the other tapestry useless). I suspected that Lawrence would have Vond travel to the Refuge after the exit had been sabotaged, stranding him there. On the other hand, this is too obvious, so it can’t be what’s actually happen. On the other other hand, it’s so obvious that nobody would believe that it could be the solution…
“I’m going to set the palace aside for a moment,” — that seems odd, if he means “put it down” somewhere. It would, I suppose, make it easy for the last people in the palace to be evacuated quickly in case Vond messes with it again; and if he was worried about looking weak if he moved out of Warlock House, how weak would he look if he set the palace down without getting any concessions from the wizards or the city government first? So I read it as saying “I’m going to stop paying so much much attention to the problem of the palace and negotiations with the wizards”, and that “directing” means he’s going to send in the mercenaries without going into the tapestry world himself. It might help to clarify the wording in the final draft, but on the other hand, the next or next-but-one chapter will undoubtedly clarify any ambiguities here so that may not be necessary.
Since the book is written, you going to send the whole thing to the paying customers like last time? Send me the remianing chapters and I can acrobat it up for you (I already have up thru 32 ready to go in tha tmode).
I only do that if the money stops coming in, as happened with Realms of Light.
Thanks anyway.
Btw, the change to chapter 31, in case anyone missed it was presumably:
“I don’t know what wizardry can and can’t do, your Majesty,” Hanner said. “I’m not sure anyone does.” He hesitated, then said, “Perhaps you should move elsewhere, if this concerns you so.”
Vond waved the idea away. “No, no. This is Warlock House, and I am the last warlock. The symbolism is important. Besides, I mustn’t look weak. I am staying here, and that tapestry cannot be allowed to remain as it is. The spell as it is now, the way you bought it – can it be changed so that no one can emerge in this house?”
Btw, is there any way to set up a “preview comment”?
What’s a preview comment?
Where you could hit “preview” and it would show you what you are about to post.
I was 99% confident that my attempt to use the italics tags would fail. If there was a “preview comment” option I could have tested what I was about to submit.
Ah, I was reading “preview” as an adjective, rather than a verb.
I’m using an old straight-from-the-box version of WordPress, and if it has any options like that, I don’t know how to invoke them. I can check, I guess.