My story is roaring along. Somewhere around 40,000 words so far, I think. I'm working on chapter 10, now, and I have already done several pages of what is supposed to be the next section of the book.

After Chapter 12 there'll be a different narrator, for what is supposed to be about a third of the book, before coming back to Anastasia in the end. The middle chunk is the diary of this native princeling, Thomas MacLayne, which Anastasia acquires and pastes into her memoir. A lot of it is about her, but from a different perspective. I like how it's working out so far. The second narrator is another interesting character, at least to me. In part, he's a foil to her. He is suave and charismatic, an actor and a gifted emotional manipulator, where she barely knows what emotions are. My plan for writing him is to spend as long as it takes to come up with the perfect things for him to say in each situation, and then have him say them off the top of his head. He's actually not supposed to be a jerk at all, though. Where Anastasia is the fantasy about the sane and decent person having superior firepower, and never being fazed by anything, Thomas is the fantasy about the sane and decent person having guile and charm. Plus another bizarre superpower of his own. And yeah, he's a love interest, though it's an extremely problematic match from both sides, and the story as a whole is by no means mainly a love story.

None of the major plot twists have yet appeared, but I have them planned out. The whole thing may run to around 150,000 words if the later parts of my plot skeleton expand in the same ratio that the first parts have. It's still a lot of fun to write.

But: I'm starting to worry about the potential legal implications of posting it all here. Someday this thing may be publishable. I'm not planning to give up my day job in any case, and if it turns out that nobody but me really likes the story, Ehh, oh well. It will have been a hoot to do, just for myself. But why close any doors when I don't have to, you know?

I don't seem to be needing the rhythm of posting chapters here to keep me writing. I may post more chapters if I get around to finding out what the commercial consequences of posting them are, and discover that they are unimportant.

Otherwise, y'all may have to wait for a while to find out what happens. Thanks for reading.