To start with ...

Hello, if you're reading this!

Yes, SM4200 is still alive. It's somewhat catatonic at times, but I am -- and have been for some time -- working on chapter 11. There are currently 22690 words done (say 131K) and I'd guess it's about 70-80% complete.

This doesn't mean you can expect to see the next chapter very soon. My writing speed has never been fast, and it hasn't improved any over the years. (There's more to it than that ... but perhaps that's a subject for another post.) I've been taking a couple of weeks' leave, during which I had hoped to polish the thing off, but it hasn't worked out that way. I've been too busy, well, being on leave.

The chapter's reached a point where I should, perhaps, consider posting a teaser or preview or whatever, as I've done before. That hasn't always worked out so well, of course! The teaser for chapter 9 ended up not being in chapter 9 at all (the scene got shunted forward to chapter 10).

At least I posted the "interlude" segment recently. That was, well, eccentric, but at least it shows the story isn't dead. (And I did manage to work in one actual main-story plot point, though only a couple of people seem to have spotted it.)

Enough for now. I'm not sure that I'm even going to keep this blog going, but we'll see how it works out.