Progress report:

Last time looked at: 9/3/15

Last actual wordage added: 9/3/15

Pages added, 9/3/15: 1

Current page count: 4

Estimated final page count: I’m not sure it’s ever going to end; it may be an ongoing serial.

Deadline: None. Purely speculative.

Comments: Vicky’s trying to get everyone organized, even though she has no idea what’s going on. The cast has added Tanner, Shelly, and Aidan J.

Progress report:

Last time looked at: 9/2/15

Last actual wordage added: 9/2/15

Pages added 9/2/15: 1

Current page count: 7

Estimated final page count: 400?

Deadline: None.

Comments: I missed a progress report on this one somewhere.

Mirit got renamed Virit. The two Surushalla elders are bickering; the mountain elder, Turunis, thinks the whole concept of a siege is just stupid and wants to go home, while everyone else recognizes the seriousness of the situation.

Progress report:

Last time looked at: 7/11/15

Last actual wordage added: 7/11/15

Pages added 7/11/15: 3

Current page count: 14

Estimated final page count: No idea at all; don’t know if it’s a short story or a novel.

Deadline: None. Purely speculative. Started it on a whim.

Comments: Julie and I got talking about this story, and wound up completely changing where the story was going; I like the new version much better.

So much so that I’ve stayed up much too late working on it. Finished the first chapter/section/whatever, though. Nick and Dan are on their way to Rawlinsburg, leaving Tom and Al in Osborne.

Excerpt:

“Deputy, do you really think the Devil would come riding in here on a mule, wearing a dirty old Stetson and boots with the heels worn down? I’d heard Old Scratch was a snappy dresser.”

Dan gave me a dirty look and made a sort of whinny; he never cared to be called a mule, and never mind that to all accounts and purposes he happened to be one just then.

Progress report:

Last time looked at: 9/6/14

Last significant wordage added: 9/6/14

Pages added 9/6/14: 1

Current page count: 8 at the start of the main narrative, and 1 from the end.

Estimated final page count: Maybe 300-400.

Deadline: None. Purely speculative.

Comments: I presented Second and Sixth with a bit of a puzzle. Which will also teach the reader something about the magic these people employ.

Progress report:

Last time looked at: 8/7/14

Last actual wordage added: 8/7/14

Pages added 8/7/14: 0

Current page count: 15

Estimated final page count: About 350

Deadline: None. Purely speculative.

Comments: Apparently switching this from WordPerfect to Neo Office did something — it was 14 pages instead of 15 — so I added six lines to get it onto page 15 again.

Besides, I finally figured out what happens next. Donnie is not happy, and Rudy’s trying to convince him everything’s okay.

Progress Report:

Last time looked at: 8/4/14

Last actual wordage added: 6/23/08

Pages added, 6/23/08: 1

Current page count: 26. (Was 23, but I added headers.)

Estimated final page count: 350-400.

Deadline: None. Purely speculative. Not yet submitted anywhere in any form, let alone contracted.

Comments: I didn’t actually add anything new to this, as you’ll see from the entries above, but I did haul it out, look it over, put it in a modern format, etc.

I had originally intended to post the opening scene to my blog, along with the twenty-three others I’ve put there so far, but I realized that it’s out of date. I wrote that scene in… 1987, maybe? A long time ago, anyway. And some of the tech on my starship’s bridge is already becoming obsolete, so I’ll need to rewrite that scene.

For that matter, I had to do some research on just how wrong the tech was, and what would happen to more modern tech in the situation I described. So I did the research, which I think justifies a progress report even if I didn’t do any actual writing yet.

Progress report:

Last time looked at: 8/4/14

Last actual wordage added: 8/4/14

Pages added 8/4/14: See below

Current page count: 4

Estimated final page count: No idea.

Deadline: None. Purely speculative.

Comments: This was originally meant to be a comic book, where I would script it and Kiri would draw it. I sent Kiri the first four script pages, and then nothing happened.

So in my current obsessive digging through unfinished projects, I dug it up, and decided to see whether I could rewrite it as prose.

I now have four pages of a prose version. This covers about a page and a half of the comic book version. And I gotta say, I think it works better as comics — but I don’t have an artist. Kiri keeps quite busy with her own projects. Sigh.

I’m really not sure what I’m going to do with it. If anything.

Last time looked at: 8/7/14

Last actual wordage added: 8/7/14

Pages added, 8/7/14: 1

Current page count: 6

Estimated final page count: 300-350.

Deadline: None. Purely speculative.

Comments: Jeret’s on his way back to his ship, but may not get there right away.

I’m probably going to retitle this because I don’t think people immediately pick up that the original was a play on “impartial observer.” For those of you who don’t remember this story — i.e., everybody but me — it’s intended to be an old-fashioned space opera; the protagonist’s job is to explore other inhabited worlds to see whether they have any customs or inventions that might be worth copying, and in doing this he stumbles across A Threat to the Galaxy.

Progress report:

Last time looked at: 8/20/17

Last actual wordage added: 8/20/17

Pages added, 8/20/17: 2

Current page count: 5

Estimated final page count: 300? I don’t really have any idea.

Deadline: None. Purely speculative.

Word count: 1,025

Comments: Okay, I’m starting to get rolling. Hyacinth has convinced Lily to stay with the body while she goes to fetch the constable. Lily is terrified she’ll be found by elves and kidnapped or killed, but has agreed to stay anyway.

Progress report:

Last time looked at: 8/5/14

Last actual wordage added: 8/5/14

Pages added 8/5/14: 1

Current page count: 13 (I’m not sure whether I missed a progress report or gained a page from reformatting; the previous progress report says I was on 11, but the file was on 12.)

Estimated final page count: 400?

Deadline: None.

Comments: Where I hadn’t worked on this for four and a half years I had to update a few things; I’d updated it back in ’09, but it needed more.

(For those of you who don’t remember, which is probably all of the tiny handful reading this), I originally started writing this in the late 1980s.)

Anyway, I’d hauled it out as part of my file-sorting project, so I thought I’d give it a little more attention. I’d stopped with the narrator, Will (unless I decide he’s Wayne Ellsworth), wondering if maybe he’s going nuts; in today’s installment he decides he can leave that question open for now, and gets ready to drive the Car for Al.