7,800 words on Calamity of So Long a Life this weekend. This draft is running slower than usual, as I've observed before. I spend time touching back between the manuscript and the outline, updating both documents. My normal forward momentum on novel writing is not in play here. Rather, this is a more iterative process for me involving continuous re-reading, editing, and forward outlining of scenes/sections.

Quite a learning experience, too. I'm enjoying this, but the process challenges me. I have no real sense of how this is going, as I don't have a first reader anymore, but I'll sort it out.

Some WIP...

"Stop!" At least she was getting answers of a sort now. "Why did the Earl of Taliesen send you with me on this mission to find the Before Michaela Cannon?"

"Wind, find, behind, unwind, never mind, his Hoageness is one of us, crazed with mistrust but even he sees what must be in fear of what is to come. Do you fear a Mistake?"

It took Novotny a moment to register that the Library Peridot had asked her a question. That wasn't something they normally were said to do. And in asking a question, it had halted its own nigh-hypnotic babble.

"I fear many things," she said softly. "Not the least of which is any number of mistakes, and not the most of which is only one more Mistake."

"Do not fear," the Library announced. "Believe. You cannot stop this any more than you can stop a nova. A nova a trove of exploding stars beyond ours the world ended once in light and remains there a flame against the dark to deep to remark or unmake no ark will float high enough to avoid this tide which will–"

"Stop!" She could make herself crazy speaking with the wretched thing. Novotny dialed down the voice control and sheathed the horrid talking head in duraplastic once more.

If only she could sheathe herself in duraplastic...