Works in Progress: Echoes of Light and Wings of Air

Progress continues. Sort of. I started Wings of Air on May 1st, and it’s going… well, it’s going. It’s only been three days, though. That’s not a bad number for three days. And if you follow me on Twitter, you likely saw this tweet about Echoes of Light the other day.

A third of the way into writing my “the Wandering Jew in the Wild West” novel and I hate it. Well, I don’t *hate* hate it. But it’s going too slow. I think I need to rework this.

Good thing it’s not due until December.

— Elizabeth Schechter (she/her) (@EASchechter) April 30, 2020

I wound up writing backwards — ripping out most of a chapter and a half, and setting them aside. I can use some of it, so it’s not a total loss. But in a work of a projected 30,000 words, to be over a third of the way in and not have met the love interest? No, that’s too slow. The love interest now enters, dramatically, in chapter three.

Echoes is being another slow writing project, because I keep having to stop and do research. The setting is off the Arkansas River, just outside of Skullyville and Fort Coffee, in what was Arkansas after the Civil War. I keep having to stop and check maps, which is interesting because on the modern maps, the borders have moved so everything is now Oklahoma, Skullyville was a port town but has since moved inland, and Fort Coffee isn’t there anymore! (Now, granted, Fort Coffee was destroyed during the Civil War, but when the story is set, there were ruins. Now? There’s a sign.)  So I have to compare modern maps to period maps.

Once I get them moving, it’s to a fictional town, so I won’t have as much map-reading to do. But for now? I’m doing a lot of Googling.

In other news… there’s not a lot of other news. Necronomicon has cancelled for 2020. I’m still waiting to hear about Keiser SuperCon, Megacon and RWA Nationals.  I also need to decide what I’m doing if these events do happen. I mean, I’m asthmatic, which puts me in the higher risk group. I think that means that I really shouldn’t be doing conventions this year (unless I have no choice — with RWA Nationals, since I’ on the Board of Directors, I have to go to Nationals). Which means that if you want to see me in 2020… ummm… you probably won’t see me at a convention in 2020.

That being said, I just did my first ever online convention with FutonCon. It was run entirely on Discord, and it was interesting. There’s more panel interaction than when I did my live reading on Facebook, which is nice, but it’s still kind of hard to get past the feeling of “I’m talking to myself.”

I think I prefer in-person conventions, given my choice. And, you know, the option of not catching the never-get-overs.

That’s all from my neck of the woods. Stay safe. Stay in, if you can. And wash your hands.