My writing had been going along with slow but steady progress for the last few weeks.  I’ve been almost exclusively focused on revisions for Thorns 1, and am about 3/4 of the way through this pass.  I’ve been paying particular attention to Terrence’s character, and the character of the chief villain of the story, his brother Gregory.  There’s been a few new scenes, and some tweaking of existing scenes.

I’ve also found a few opportunities to do more with Penelope, the heroine of my unexpected additional novel.  She’s still a small character in this book, but Terrence and Rose wonder about her a little more, and worry a little more when she leaves the scene (events that lead her to her own book).  Here’s an excerpt from an added scene featuring her.

Penelope always seemed to have a wall up that Terrence didn’t know how to get past.  Someone else might find a clever way around, but the best he could think of was to just fling himself at it.  Because there really had been something on her face, when she’d looked at him just then—  “Are you happy here, Penelope?  Do you…miss where you grew up?”

A long pause stretched out, as Penelope continued with her embroidery, and he thought she wasn’t even going to answer.  But at last she said, “The castle in Relnyra was close enough to the shore to hear the waves, especially at night.  I do miss that sound.”

That was a more personal remark than he’d ever had from her before – but it didn’t answer his first question.  “That sounds nice.  It must be hard, to be in such a different place,” he said carefully, not certain they were actually talking about waves.

I didn’t know that about the waves until I wrote this scene, and now I’ll likely make reference to it in Penelope’s book.  There are advantages to writing multiple books in a series all at once!

I have done a little work on other projects, in preparation for the writing retreat I’m attending this weekend.  Myself and the other attendees are currently revising a collaborative novel we’ve been working on for a couple of years, so I worked on my revisions for that.  We’re also planning a new series of short stories we intend to collaborate on, and have agreed to bring brief backstories for our characters to the retreat.  So I wrote up a few pages for that too.

The name is Gullideon Tallmabill Llemipress Gallsnu Lednull – the name I give to outsiders, you understand.  Among my own people, my name is far longer and much more impressive, but you all have such short attention spans.  My friends call my Gulli, but don’t take that as an invitation.

You noticed the tail, didn’t you?  I saw you staring at it.  You aliens – sorry, non-Maotus – tend to be distracted by them.  Try to cope, all right?

So up until about one galactic standard year ago, I was the finest pilot in the United Fleet, bar none.  The way I handle a ship is a thing of beauty so profound that it can make a grown Dekoth weep.  Why am I not still in the United Fleet?  Ah well, that was a bit of bad luck – and not my fault at all.

I mean, really – you enter one interstellar race on your day off, you crash into one hoity toity noble yacht that was totally out of its lane and failing to signal properly, and suddenly there’s all these admirals yelling about public relations nightmares blah blah blah, and you find yourself kicked out of the Fleet for “irresponsible behavior” and “unbecoming conduct” etc. etc.

I’m definitely looking forward to exploring this character more, and hopefully making some solid progress on Thorns 1 while on retreat too.  We’ll see how it goes!