Newsletter - January 31, 2023

This past weekend, my wife flew to Nashville for a girls' weekend to celebrate her birthday. I love that she took the opportunity to celebrate, and that so many of her friends joined her.

I planned a video to make her laugh/groan while she was out with her girls, but it fell flat. At least the twins ended up with wooden swords out of the effort. Here is a link to the reel on Instagram - I have no idea how well the video attaches to the email.

Despite spending most of my free-time last weekend on the efforts to create the video for my wife's amusement, I accomplished some writing as well. I focused on the chapter I mentioned last week--the one I'd skipped that actually accounted for a good bit of time in the story. Expositional chapters are not my forte. It's not that I cannot write them--they're the easiest to write. Making them interesting? Now that's a challenge. Plus, the character and storyline arcs still have to continue through that time. It's a tall order. I don't think I accomplished ALL of that on my first try, but it isn't terrible. I definitely feel like it works enough that I can move on and continue writing. It won't be a deal-breaker for the story. While the first third of the story focuses on the travel, the second third needs to focus on the destinations. Gear shift.

I have no updates on the art. The artist sent some contract updates; I asked some questions, and it fizzled out. Since my daughter goes to the same school, I know they had a school dance this week, and maybe he had other concerns.

My youngest took a stab at drawing a mucker, a four-footed duck-like creature that the elves use to travel through the swamps.

My youngest daughter's interpretation of the muckers from the swamps and grasslands near Fael Themar

o To-Do list for writing last week:

~~Email updates~~
~~Keep working on Part 2 of Mother of Trees~~ - check... plugged away.
~~Jot down some ideas about the Faelian Swamp~~ - did more than that... wrote a first pass of the chapter.
Finalize conditions for contract with artist - nope, lost contact.

o To-Do list for writing this week: