Where have you gone, Joe Dimaggio?

Okay, so I'm not the Yankee Clipper. However, I have been noticeably absent for a while. Except for my bragging about winning the office pool and my new fascination with the Italian Football team. Did I mention I won the office pool? Yeah, it was pretty sweet. I'm a winner.

So, I did mention that I was going to be gone on a "vacation" for a couple of weeks. It was more like a week and a half. I didn't actually get anything scribbled down on paper to come back and write in text form, but I did get a number of ideas resolved and fixed and everything. In fact, one of the major boons was that I settled on names for the eight dukes of the northern kingdom (which is currently named Melaris, but I'm not sure. It's supposed to have bees on its flag. I'm not sure yet, though.) Anyway, the dukes are: Barrabosh, Ciavola, Crockett, Houghton, Mendenhall, Sunderman, Wimmer and Worster. Those who know me well (or REALLY well, probably) will recognize from where these names originated (hint: Beloved). Ciavola and Sunderman are the main dukes that we will be dealing with from now on, but they're all important.

I've also had troubles getting the story going. It seems that a few days off killed my writing momentum. I'm just now getting settled back into a daily schedule as well as adjusting to this new diet I've put myself on. I have, however, finally started tip-typing on the keyboard. There's not much to report. I've been working mostly on chapters seven and eight (hence the need for the Dukes). I've decided I'm pretty happy with where Redear's character is going. He's slowly becoming more and more a "man". Jane remains...well...a scared little girl. Skulk still remains my favorite character. Also, I was so impressed with Luca Toni's effort in the World Cup final that I named a character "Luca". I like him a lot, too. Luca Sunderman, though Luca Toni seems nice enough, too (at least he kept his pants on during the post-World Cup victory celebration).

I don't have a word count, mostly because I'm lazy. It's around 33,000 and around 110 pages. I'll be more accurate later.

For now, I have to figure out what to do for dinner.