Coming of the Fen — The Ohio Invasion

There’s a certain amount of wackiness in what I have going on right now, in spite of the fact that the core of the problem my characters are facing is nothing less than save-the-world with a pretty big dollop of save-a-bunch-of-worlds.

I’m having a helluva lot of fun playing with the situation. But…

I can’t guarantee that what I wrote today will stay. It fits. It includes real-world stuff I love, and I think it’s both funny as hell, and downright terrifying in places… but I won’t know until I’ve finished this book and started in on the read-through and markup of all five books if it flows naturally from the first four books without any shark-jumping.

Context is everything. I have a lot of funny shit in all five of these books. But I won’t know until everything has cooled off and I read them fresh if the funny is undercutting the power of the scary, or just spicing it up.

But… Fen. The plural for SF/Fantasy fans who go to SF/Fantasy conventions, which I love but haven’t had the time or means to do in years. The Fen have arrived in my book. At least for now.

And — at least until the cool-down read-through, when I see if they make the cut — I’m happy to have them.

1306 words for the day, and 61,476 total. And I’ve done final calculations on my deadline, and working at this pace I have 26 days left (while still taking weekends off) until I finish the novel. I might get all wound up and run long. But if I stay in bounds, I’m now less than a month out from wrapping up the fifth book, and rolling right over to a re-read of the already revised Book 1, and then the One-Pass Revision of books Two through Five.