What I Accomplished Today...And What I Didn't

The weird effect here is from a dirty window and accidental flash.

It's been an interesting day. I tried to mail my manuscript to DAW, took some amazing photos of clouds and mountains, called two friends long distance for no reason, and spent pretty much every other waking minute on Mages of Mâvarin.

Cherrybell Station, on Cherrybell Strav.

I expect you caught the word "tried" in the paragraph above. No, I didn't get it mailed. I packed it up, found a way to print labels (on plain paper, unfortunately) from the USPS site, and drove down to Cherrybell Station, the main post office here in Tucson. But there were two problems. One, I couldn't get the right Priority Mail box or envelope from the self-serve lobby, and two, anything over thirteen ounces now has to be given to a postal employee in person. My package will weigh over six pounds. So I'll have to do it on Monday.

22nd St. near Cherrybell, looking west

Cherrybell and 22nd again.

But I got it weighed properly, anyway, and I really enjoyed the drive down there and back, because the sky was as gorgeous as I've ever seen it. Most of the photos in this entry are unedited except for size and cropping and a "sharpen lightly". A few are lightened a bit, but really, the sky was pretty much like that. The monsoon isn't quite over yet, despite the fact that my car thermometer said 101 degrees. And clearly, it wasn't really a "dry heat".

On the 22nd St. railroad bridge, looking west

22nd St. railroad bridge, looking east

Back at home afterward, I moved some scenes around so I could end An Adept in Mâvarin with Chapter 11, and rewrote two scenes to give them more closure. As it stands now, Rani take a moment to consider the fact that if he walks in the Palace, terrible things are going to happen to him, because he's been warned and he knows his enemies are inside. Then he walks in anyway, because he's a hero and he has to try to save the country and the people he loves. The End.

The scenes that follow, in which Rani and Cathma and Crel are all kidnapped, Darsuma loses her battle for self-determination and Fabi encounters a mysterious man from his past, are all in Another Mâvarin now, where they belong. I even managed to even out some chapter lengths a bit, renamed two chapters to keep then thematically relevant, and did my first complete word count in probably about five years. The word count file, which has stopped crashing since that MS Office update, now reflects each individual volume of the trilogy, and every one of the 35 chapters is now labeled and paginated for the volume it's in, not just the trilogy as a whole. All my specialized formatting styles are now in use in each document, the two spaces after periods are now single spaces, and tabs at the beginnings of paragraphs have been replaced by indents. Ta-dah! And it only took all evening and half the night!

That's all right. It needed to be done; it's all stuff I've put off for years. Now I can concentrate on the actual text, the continuity and half-written scenes and such. And Adept is essentially done ready to go. With an ending, even! Hooray!

Karen