Status Update: Drafts and Games

This has been a go-slow writing time for me after pushing myself to get Hunting out.  Drafting Pyramids is fairly research-heavy comparatively, since though I have a passing familiarity with the various cultures I'm playing with - and intend to distort them almost out of recognition - I still need to increase my understanding of their starting points before the alternate circumstances kick in (technically the alternate starts in 18th Dynasty Egypt, but the main impacts don't hit 'til later).

Not that I haven't started getting words on the page.  This book (and the next few) are roughly plotted out in my head, but I've put it on hold for the moment to prepare to switch to Bones.  [Er, prepare by being distracted into writing some smut.]  Bones will be done by the end of the year (there's really only some revision and adjustment to be done on that - the first draft was at about the 9/10 point).  [I'm debating pushing it over to the beginning of January just for award cut off dates convenience - we'll see.]

I'll start on that once my mental energy has recovered - it's been chewed up the last few weeks by a somewhat stressful project at my day job, and entertaining domestic issues, not least:

That was fun to come home to.  Both the power and the phone line attach to that pole, so, yeah...

The biggest consumer of my free time for the next few months is likely to be Final Fantasy XIV.  FFXIV was the second MMO released in the Final Fantasy series and tanked soon after launch thanks to severe lack of content.  It was pulled, revised, and has just gone into open beta.

It has swallowed me whole.

Fortunately I do most of my quality writing on the train to work in the morning, so this does not mean all writing progress stops.  And the mid-level doldrums are sure to hit and make the game less attractive.

Final Fantasy XI was my first full-on MMO.  I lived and breathed it for a while, and then crashed and quit.  That seems to be my standard operating procedure with MMOs.

I always name my MMO characters after my book characters, and FFXIV has Rennyn.  This is Rennyn's current mid-level mage costume (it's not class specific - her main class is Thaumaturge, and I am looking forward to that armour set very much).

I'll be playing on Gungnir, if anyone wants to say "Hi".  You'll probably find me fishing.