Chapter edits

Right, I think (after a month or so of agonized procrastination and the requirement for two multi-mile walks in order to generate 300 words or so of fresh text) that I have finally managed to patch the three-winters problem in Arctic Raoul. I ended up adopting the suggestion of postponing the Spitsbergen bid by six months, so that it takes place at the start of the third winter instead of the end of the second, and, ironically, deleting the entire paragraph describing the actual journey across the ice. Ironically, because having just finished Cherry-Garrard -- who is truly excellent, by the way -- I am now equipped to write it in vivid detail... but with the additional material now preceding it, that section no longer fitted the pacing of the passage.( Read more... )

I eventually uploaded the first chapter of the rechristened "High City on a Hill" to AO3 -- having tweaked the opening according to ArkTaisch's suggestion, to establish the first-person narrator from the start. And it seems to be doing pretty well by AO3 standards, getting 2 comments and a subscription within a couple of days. (It has also generated a mini-bulge in people evidently checking out my other published stories, which my new stats software allows me to detect!)

Now I have to finalise the second chapter, which is the one that is almost entirely OC backstory... (also, I do wonder how well the story is likely to do once people realize that introducing Hertha does *not* conveniently make Christine available to pair up with the Phantom).

Yellow poppy... gone?

The pot with my carefully transplanted yellow poppy (as separated from the miniature rose) in it seems simply to have disappeared. I don't know if it blew clean away -- I can't see it rolling around anywhere in the vicinity -- or if I accidentally emptied it out and threw the 'bare sticks' away when clearing out old pots, but at any rate I can't find it. I know where it used to be, but everything got moved around when I was trying to protect it from the wind...

So I shall have to start again, with seed that appears to have a viability rate of about 1 in 1000, and is now a year older than before :-(
(Actually, I did manage to get a seed pod to ripen off that one and saved it, which is more hopeful.)