At the moment, I have a number of things being juggled around but I can't seem to resolve any of them. This means I'm at a point where I'm waiting for something to either fall or for me to catch it so I can move forward.

Sand and Blood

The biggest one is Sand and Blood. I'm still waiting for the editor. In this case, serendipity didn't work out for me, but in five days, it will have been three months since I first expected it to be returned (and four months since I sent it with the down payment). And in two days, it will be the second time that they promised something and then two weeks passed without a response. I know that I'm loyal, but I think I finally hit a limit with this editor.

Unfortunately, that left me in a nasty place where I can't afford a new one quite yet. So, I'm going to start saving up for a new editor and hope that the last one gets back to me. If I get the money together, then I'm just going to cancel and see if I can get my money back.

Sand and Love

The sequel is moving forward nicely. I hit the 30k point, which is actually a pretty good rate. This is much different story than I normally write, mainly because its more focused on how relationships can be built and torn down in the desert. Not a lot of blood and violence, but still some violence and magic. So, it isn't "Romance" with a capital R, but still is primarily a romance plot in a fantasy world.

I know that this doesn't is somewhat a contrast with Sand and Blood, which is coming of age with lots of action scenes, but I think it is an important story to tell. More importantly, I want to tell the story because I think it is an awesome story about a non-perfect relationship with people who doesn't really know how to fall in love (not that I had that problem...).

Final Commission

My final commission is finally done. This is the novella I wrote with Author Intrusion. I'm not exactly happy with it (mainly the complexity of the topic), but I was prepaid for this one over five years ago and I had to finish it. I think it is a good story, but a hard one to tell. I'm also not proud that it took so long to start, or the agony of actually writing it, but I'm glad that it is sitting in their lap.

Of course, that means the next week is anxiously waiting for a response in my email if they hate or loved it. Or what changes they made.

Note for anyone who does commissioned writing, it is really hard to finish something when you've already gotten paid. And the commissioner keeps telling you "it's okay, take you time." Its too easy to push them aside.

Author Intrusion

The next step for Author Intrusion is a big, conceptal one. I want to integrate a pluggable command interface to make it easy to add new commands and bind them to keyboard shortcuts. This is important to me because I'm writing this to work the way a writer works, not the way I work. So, I need to make it as customizable as possible to handle people who prefer Microsoft Word interactions as opposed to Scrivner or Visual Studio or Emacs. It is also the foundation of the plugin system, which will eventually allow others to write plugins to add features I can't.

The next major feature I want to add is navigation. Basically "jump to chapter" where you type Control-G T and it brings up a popup that shows all the structural elements of the novel (chapters, sections). As you type, it will filter down the list and you can choose which chapter. This will also be related to Control-E T which will bring up the same dialog, but instead of jumping to that chapter, it will only show you that chapter or section in the editor, so you can focus on a single chapter for editing or writing.

I expect this to take a few months to finish once I finish Sand and Love. I haven't been able to use Author Intrusion to write Sand and Love for a single reason: a dream sequence that is set in italics. Once I figure out that, I'll probably finish the novel in Author Intrusion, otherwise I'll stop using dream sequences for the next novel so I can use it.

Moving

Right now, the only thing I can do is work on Sand and Love. I'm at the halfway point and appear to be on track for finishing it in the next few weeks. I have a few plot points I'm not sure about, mainly how long to draw out a scene, but I'm still happy with the story.