If you’ve been following along closely enough, you have realized that there’s an excerpt from the third book in the Tuyo series at the end of NIKOLES. This third book, TARASHANA, is not finished, obviously. There hasn’t been anything like enough time to finish a whole third book since May even if I were doing nothing else AND being obsessive. (Well, actually, if both those criteria had been met, I guess there has been, but no.) It’s going to be a long book, I can say that; probably at least as long as TUYO.
Anyway, I expect the third book WILL be finished next year. I was sure enough to put that excerpt at the back of NIKOLES, even though I did not know the second half of the plot. Generally the second half occurs to me somewhere during the writing process and there’s no problem.
(I used to say always, but no. I have been completely stuck 85,000 words into an SF novel for a good long time now because the last part of the plot has not only not occurred to me, but has also resisted all attempts to bash it into shape by brute force. (Yes, this is very frustrating.))
So my actual point here is, even though I have not actually been working on that particular book lately, I woke up super early this morning and, while waiting for my alarm clock to tell me it was time to get up — five, and in a well-run world, that would be dawn all year round — anyway, while lying there, I suddenly figured out:
— who the bad guy is and what their motivation is. That was a tough one! But now it seems obvious! Hopefully my idea about this will work perfectly and I won’t have to change my mind about it, but I think it will be fine.
— exactly why the Tarashana character is behaving in the way that she is and precisely what she wants to achieve, and the specific form of magic she is trying to use, and a metaphysical justification for her to believe this will work.
— that the Tarashana character is definitely female, and why. (Why may not be visible to the reader, but there’s now a worldbuilding reason for this to be the case, as well as just deciding to make her female). Anyway, I had been going back and forth on that decision, but she is now definitely a female character.
— how to work out the timing in a way that will probably let me do the denouement I have in mind without too much trouble.
That’s basically everything. I already knew:
— how to get Our Heroes into position to meet the Tarashana character.
— an important aspect of the Ugaro society that I wanted to show you.
— the important character arcs for Ryo and Aras and also some subsidiary character arcs.
— the denouement, except there are really at least two denouement scenes. That should be fine. There are two denouement scenes in TUYO and so far no one has complained about that.
When I get back to it, I hope that TARASHANA will now be in shape to go pretty quickly.
Now, if the back of my brain would only present me with the last part of the plot of that SF novel, that would be really useful!
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