Gross Blog Negligence & Good Boar News

I'm very sorry.

Life beckoned.

(Un)fortunately, nothing truly exciting happened.

I mean, aside from further work on The Boar War.

Yes, actual progress.

And then I hit a snag. I got readdicted to playing this silly video game that I bought a few months ago. I started building up my weapons and all to try and get past this one point in the game. It became a bit of an obsession. I got past that point and then worked on taking the sword even higher. When I got the sword maxed out, I switched to a different sword, and then I broke it. And then I got pissed and shut the game off. So, I'm not speaking to the game currently.
So, you know what that means. Yep. I'm working on the book. And I've made a few adjustments to King of Thistles...er...Shadows. I keep forgetting that. Plus, I'm ThistleKing, not ShadowKing.

Ugh.

Anyway, I wrote the epilogue. It's a nice little wrap-up. If you've ever read the very ending of Lord of the Rings, in one of the appendices, Tolkien tells of what happened to the rest of the Fellowship. I just remember getting emotionally charged when Legolas builds his raft and sails past the Gray Havens with Gimli on board. That's what I tried to do with the epilogue. I basically gave a wrap up of what happens to the people on the quest in this book. I, of course, looked forward into the future and left the requisite holes in the story for a follow-up tale (I've already referenced it, but I haven't thought anything further on it). I don't want to pull a Robin Hobb and write something like "Fitz never lived in the castle ever again" only to find, a few books later, Fitz living in Buckkeep once more (not that I'm complaining...God knows I love the Fitz books, even if some people think he's way too whiny--a pox upon them, I say! (This is the part where I tell everyone who hasn't read the Fitz books to go buy them. Now! Fitz and the Fool rule, dawg. Even though, I know, no one likes a schill, Lisa)).

Not only did I do the epilogue, but I finished chapter five, chapter eight and chapter nine. I FINALLY found a way to start the beleaguered chapter seven and got about five pages into it before I decided that I really needed to finish a few of the chapters I had started. So that's why I doubled back and finished five and then pushed eight and nine to completion. I've also moved the part I had written for chapter seven to chapter ten. Very smooth transition and cuts the length of seven in about half and really works to weave several of the threads of the story together.

In all, I'm really happy with the progress I've made. And, hopefully, this week I'll top the 50,000 word mark, which is just about halfway (I'm thinking 120,000 should do it, and that makes a novel of about 400 to 450 pages (from estimates) and that's a good length for a first book, in my opinion). That leaves me roughly two-and-a-half months to complete everything before I start up NaNoWriMo (I've got a story picked out...I kind of like it). Can I do it? I hope so. I should also be able to push forward on chapter four and the two chapters I'm really deeply involved with, 12 (battle) and 13 (ties two threads together). Getting those done will really make me happy.

I also tried the Sam Adams Patriot/Brewer series. The porter was good, the dark wheat reminded me of a dopplebock, the ginger and honey beer was tasty and the root beer was horrid. The last was far too sweet for me. And I like malty stuff. Also found that Mad Hat is distributing here in North Carolina now. I didn't know which sixer to pick up, but then I saw the sampler pack. You know how that story ended. I really need to update my beer list...

Numbers for you (to track my progress):
Word count: 46818
Page count: 155

I will update later in the week. And hopefully it will be shorter than this one.