Weekends are too short!
On the other hand, you know what the time change means to me? It means I’m suddenly getting up in the middle of the night (practically) and boom! there is now time to write in the morning. I don’t care that I’m now flipping off the lights at eight pm. I’ll adjust my own time to more closely approximate a normal person’s schedule AS SOON AS I’M DONE WITH TASMAKAT, which will be any day now. Though I may leave my schedule orthogonal to a normal schedule until I’ve also gotten through the first fast revision pass, which, seriously, should not take long as long as I have time to work on it during the morning.
I’m not in the last chapter. Not quite. I’m very definitely in the denouement (hah! spelled it right first time!). All kinds of important characters are appearing for little cameos and a few lines of dialogue, just enough to let me tie off their various threads. This is requiring a bit of going back and forth as I realize someone hasn’t said anything for eight paragraphs and is she still actually there? Because if she’s there, she better say something. Plus this is necessarily a crowd scene, and getting more crowded as we go, and that’s always intrinsically difficult.
I’ve got just a few more of these loose threads to tie off before I write the last scene, and in fact something else that ought to happen here just came into my mind — fine, two more things — and this chapter is , of course, stretching out a bit. However, I’m letting this penultimate chapter stretch, because I want the last scene — actually, the last two scenes — plus the transition to those scenes, I guess — to be set off in a chapter of their own. That will be a short chapter, which is fine; the very last chapter is usually short.
The last chapter, by the way, will be Chapter 50, and if that weren’t true, I’d rechaptinate the whole thing to make it true, because 49 chapters is silly when you can wind up with 50 even.
How long is the draft now?
I’m embarrassed to tell you. No, whatever number of words you just thought of, probably the draft is longer than that. I am just longing to take an ax to the back 2/3 of this draft, but I absolutely will not do that until I have written this last … little … tiny … bit.
I will, however, show you the cover now.
Please Feel Free to Share:
Nice cover! I’ve been very impressed at the quality of art you’ve gotten for your covers.
Nice composition, though with those dunes I’d expect fennec instead of kit fox. (I did a report in 4th grade.) Plus fox looks a little large and has no footprints in sand.
It’s a jackal, Pete Mack! Jackals are thematically important, remember. The Lakasha people have the heads of jackals.
It’s true I would have preferred a golden jackal, but black-backed and side-striped jackals are more common.
I didn’t notice the lack of footprints, but jackals are specifically magical creatures in this book, so actually, that’s not totally inappropriate.
Who does your covers? It’s beautiful!
Camille, these people:
https://trifbookdesign.com/book-cover-designs/
I saw covers of theirs on a Facebook group called, um, Book Cover Gallery, I think. I was specifically looking for anyone who ever did any covers that were heavy on the landscape and not necessarily ALWAYS with a woman-with-weapon-and-animal UF style. If you look, you’ll see that they do tons of the UF type, that’s what I see in their portfolio right now, but they showed some with more landscape at the time. As you see, they do a great job with my covers! Their prices have gone up and you now have to schedule a cover expecting that it may be some time before they get to it, so I think they’re probably pretty busy. But I’m glad I found them.
Thanks! The do some beautiful work. I love all the covers for your Tuyo series books, they’re really striking!
The cover looks lovely, and I’m glad the writing is going well.
I may need to get physical copies of all the Tuyo books, just to have the pretty covers on my shelf!