Today's Second Update

It's finished.  I just kept writing, most of today.  Chapter 16 is done.

It's not posted yet.  First I need to re-read it and do, well, probably quite a lot of editing. It would be nice to have somebody else look at it, too, but all my beta readers (or "pre-readers" as we used to call them) have been out of contact for many years. (Chapter 15 was eventually posted without beta reading.) I'll do some thinking about that.

(If you'd like to be a beta reader, and I mean if you genuinely think you can add value to a story through commentary, then drop me a line. By email, not by a comment on this blog post. Comments with offers to be beta readers will be rejected. If you have to ask what my email address is, you probably shouldn't be a beta reader.)

Final first-draft word count: 34,394 words.

On to chapter 17…

Today's Update

I've made a few typo corrections to some of the early chapters: removing unwanted spaces from the middle of phrases like "dark- brown hair".

The prelude has been updated to correct the inconsistency I mentioned in my previous post.

And I've updated appendices 1 and 4, adding a new name to the Who’s Who. It's for a character who first appears by name in chapter 16, so this is a tiny bit premature…but as spoilers go it's pretty negligible.

As regards progress on Chapter 16…I'm so, so close to the end now. A tiny bit of wrap-up work left to do on the big battle scene (in which I have finally written the climax of a plot-line that's been building literally since chapter one), and one more short scene after that.

Progress update: 32,226 words.

But wait, there's more. Last Wednesday night, I had quite a vivid dream of a scene from Chapter 17, a story development that I've been planning for quite a while, but which—in my dream—didn't go anything like I'd been expecting. But I love it so much that I started writing it. So, long story short, there's about 1600 words of Chapter 17 written now, too. Spoiler hint: Sailor Uranus goes on a spirit-journey to the planet Uranus, and meets the ruler of that world. Why? She's looking for the Space Sword.

As part of researching this bit, I had a long dialog with ChatGPT, trying to decide on a title that Uranus should use to address the ruler of Uranus.  We came up with 蒼穹大王陛下—Sōkyū Daiō Heika, Great King of the Firmament. (I didn't just take the AI's word for it, I've also discussed this with a native Japanese speaker, who saw no problem with it.) If you're a Japanese speaker, and see any problems, do let me know!

An Inconsistency Found

This is quite annoying. Way back in the Prelude, I see that Artemis remarks to Bendis that she should have been able to recognise a member of the Serenity Council because “The uniform should have been a big hint.” And immediately after writing that, I simply forgot that Serries wear uniforms.

Well, I have a couple of choices here.  I can start putting uniforms on Serries when they appear. (My initial thought is something with an embroidered rationale worn around the neck…but maybe that's over-fancy.) However, if I do that then I really ought to tweak some earlier chapters to show that uniforms are being worn, even if I don't describe them fully.

The other choice is to tweak the Prelude and remove the reference to a uniform. A lot simpler and probably the more sensible option because, in a Japanese environment—even a pseudo-futuristic one—sharp business suits seem a lot more likely.

I'd be interested to hear anyone's thoughts, though.

Progress update: 28,769 words.

The work proceeds

Sometimes I hit one scene that tries to take over the chapter. But the big Senshi Meeting is nearly over, and I've managed to work a lot of thread-tying into it. Some new twists have emerged, in ways that surprised but also delighted me. Fairly pleased with how it's looking.

Progress update: 26,080 words.

Still making progress

I'm flying to Japan again on Friday, to visit my mother-in-law. She's 92 and a bit cranky, and she speaks as little English as I do Japanese…but she seems to approve of me, and I have to admit I'm fond of her too. My wife and I go to Japan as often as we can, just lately, to see as much of her as we can, while we can.

Meanwhile writing continues. I've slowed down a bit because I was having trouble finding the "voice" of the big scene I'm working on. But it's moving at last.

Progress update: 18,385 words.

Progress Update

I've been stuck for a while because there are two major scenes (or perhaps I should say "set pieces") left to write in the new chapter, and both of them need to tie together a lot of threads.  So I've been trying to plot them out so that everything works together, and it just hasn't been jelling.

Well, I think I have one of them sorted, at least.  The other one is still a bother: I need certain characters connecting in certain ways, at a certain location, all tying into other stuff in the chapter that's already written.  I keep on coming up with story fragments that tie into earlier scenes, but which don't quite intersect properly with other stuff. I'll work it out eventually, but for now it's a pain in the ass.

This chapter is going to tie up a number of plot threads that have been building, some of them for a very long time.

Progress update: 16487 words.

Rewriting today

 I'd started a new plot thread about Seki having to get a new job to stay afloat, and asking Sadako for help—and Sadako getting her a position as a production assistant on a cooking show. It was a fun idea, but it needed to lead into a much more major plot point, and it just wasn't working out very well.

So, goodbye production assistant; I've gone another way. But I had to tear out 750 words—alas.

The discarded words went into my file of cut scenes, which I keep in case it's ever helpful to refer back. (Doesn't happen often, but you never know.) Here, if you're interested, is some of the cut material:

On Thursday morning, Seki went to her first job interview in more than two thousand years.

After laughing at her for an irritating length of time, Sadako had steered her to the Third Tokyo World Online hiring system, with suggestions on where to look. T‑TWO was mostly hiring people with media credentials, but there were areas where you could get a foot in the door if you knew the right buzz-words.

(And, okay, maybe Sadako put in a word on her behalf. Seki didn’t want to know, but she damn well suspected.)

The interview went by rather easily—Seki did have decent people skills when she wanted to show them; she’d been a public figure for long enough that they were essential—and in a dizzyingly short time she had a “we’ll give you a call” along with a handshake which suggested that the delay was purely a matter of form.

Late that afternoon, she got a call to ask if she could start the next day. (Yes, Sadako had definitely put in a word in.) Seki gritted her teeth and smiled as she said yes.

And so, somehow, on Friday morning she was suddenly a production assistant on—of all things—a cooking show.

How Makoto and Artemis laughed.

*

“Production assistant,” she quickly discovered, meant that she was a general dogsbody who did anything and everything needed on the set, that wasn’t being done by somebody more experienced.

For a while she thought she would go mad, constantly being called to do dozens of things at once, all of which seemed to involve technical terms that she did not recognise. “Call sheets?” “Wrangling?” What was any of that supposed to mean? After she got shouted at for opening a tool box to look for something called a “gaffer,” she almost lost her temper.

At that point, thankfully, she was taken under the wing of a fiftyish man with a long, mournful face who seemed to have worked in the industry for most of his life. He started to explain things, and after a while she began to follow what was happening around her.

In the afternoon, she even had a chance to shine, when one of the chef’s assistants tripped over a cable and ruined a trayful of something (by this time Seki was no longer paying attention to what anyone was actually cooking), and had a meltdown on-set. To Seki, who had been Queen Serenity’s major-domo for several hundred years, a stressed-out servitor was nothing new. She stepped in, drew the crying man aside, and spoke to him quietly. He reacted to firm, level-headed authority like most people do, and within a few minutes the crisis was over; the chef, working quickly and expertly, managed to replace the ruined tray; and production wrapped for the day only ten minutes late.

Nobody said thank you to Seki, but she felt the producer’s eyes on her, and suspected that her job was secure.

Progress update: 13,658 words.

More updates

All chapters have now been updated to the new style, which I hope you'll find more readable.

While I was at it, I did a couple of very minor tweaks to the Interlude chapter (I'll be amazed if you spot what changed). Plus I updated the Appendices; mostly adding new entries to the Timeline.

I should probably do a revised edition of the ebooks, sometime, and actually put links to them on the web page. (I've only ever mentioned them here in this blog, so far.) As ever, I'm held up by not having any decent cover art for them. (Maybe I should see what an AI can manage?!)