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igenlodeI have 2,300 words of Perrette typed, which I reckon to be about half the first chapter; the two halves are going to be distinctly unbalanced, but the second half is long enough to run alone, and the two together are really too much for a one-shot.
I'm running into all sorts of editing problems resulting from having been writing very slowly and hence inconsistently, like the question of whether Philippe was supposed to be letting Raoul make his own way cross-country (implied at the start), or whether he was sending him off with a groom in attendance in order to catch the train (written later, where he arranges to evade his escort and catch the stagecoach in the opposite direction). Since someone would have to bring the vehicle back, he does need a driver -- and I can't see Philippe letting his brother walk out of the chateau gates with a knapsack on his way to Brest, so I compromised with a version of the later story :-p
Likewise there is the question of when Perrette told Agathe what about Raoul, the original implication being that they were whispering together about his identity on the first page, when he is embarrassed by the attention. But if Agathe already knew about Philippe (as stated outright in ch2, and I think she would have reacted very differently to the revelations if she didn't know), then she would have known that Raoul was his brother as soon as she found out the boy's identity as the Viscount. And since she evidently doesn't make that connection, whatever they were talking about at the beginning it can't have been that...
And I think the cherries of the original story will have to become plums, because while I have carefully avoided specifying a date the action of the first chapter is set around 'the beginning of term', e.g. late August/early September, which is really too late for the cherry season -- even squishy ones :-(
Not to mention the question of how they manage to surmount the crest of a hill and *then* come to a ford across a river, which normally occur in the bottoms of valleys! It will have to be implied to be a stream running down the side of the valley and hence flowing across the road, I think...
I'm pretty sure now that *none* of the seedlings that have
come up so far in the chilli pot are actually chillies, which is reassuring in a way, since they weren't expected to germinate anything like that quickly!
I'm running into all sorts of editing problems resulting from having been writing very slowly and hence inconsistently, like the question of whether Philippe was supposed to be letting Raoul make his own way cross-country (implied at the start), or whether he was sending him off with a groom in attendance in order to catch the train (written later, where he arranges to evade his escort and catch the stagecoach in the opposite direction). Since someone would have to bring the vehicle back, he does need a driver -- and I can't see Philippe letting his brother walk out of the chateau gates with a knapsack on his way to Brest, so I compromised with a version of the later story :-p
Likewise there is the question of when Perrette told Agathe what about Raoul, the original implication being that they were whispering together about his identity on the first page, when he is embarrassed by the attention. But if Agathe already knew about Philippe (as stated outright in ch2, and I think she would have reacted very differently to the revelations if she didn't know), then she would have known that Raoul was his brother as soon as she found out the boy's identity as the Viscount. And since she evidently doesn't make that connection, whatever they were talking about at the beginning it can't have been that...
And I think the cherries of the original story will have to become plums, because while I have carefully avoided specifying a date the action of the first chapter is set around 'the beginning of term', e.g. late August/early September, which is really too late for the cherry season -- even squishy ones :-(
Not to mention the question of how they manage to surmount the crest of a hill and *then* come to a ford across a river, which normally occur in the bottoms of valleys! It will have to be implied to be a stream running down the side of the valley and hence flowing across the road, I think...
I'm pretty sure now that *none* of the seedlings that have
come up so far in the chilli pot are actually chillies, which is reassuring in a way, since they weren't expected to germinate anything like that quickly!