Another overdue missive! My Halloween costume ate up a lot of what would otherwise have been book-time, but it was nice to have an after-hours activity that didn't involve using my brain much (I highly recommend papercraft/pepakura as folding meditation!).

I've been filling out my "write this later" placeholder chapters in Act 1, plus clarifying the purpose and outcome of each scene in that act, and only today do I feel like it's truly nearing completion. (The Act 1 word count has increased significantly, from 25,000 to 33,000.) This is a sample of what my tracker looks like:

Defining per-scene motivations/outcomes has been extremely helpful, but doing it only for Sierra, only for Act 1, represented multiple work days, so I'm dreading having to do it for each of my secondary characters as planned.

In the meantime, releasing a new chapter today! I present: "Aldus Swann." Herein Sierra recalls the beginnings of a strange friendship, and we get our first glimpse of Hyacinth in the flesh.

~~"Aldus Swann"~~ [obsolete link removed]