Notes for Chapter Seven

I wrote the notes for this chapter, then my computer crashed, and they were lost, lost forever. So now, late Sunday night, I try to reconstruct...

This is my favorite chapter yet. Can't go wrong with sex and violence. I love that Marla still has some uncertainty and vulnerability in this story, that her emotions can sometimes run close to the surface, as they so seldom do later on... ah, youth.

Thanks to Jenn Reese for reading over the opening martial-arts-heavy scene and letting me know the dumb things I did. I tried to fix it; any errors that remain are solely my own.

This is an eventful chapter, something of a turning point, and so I sat down and made an actual outline, of sorts, for the rest of the story. Marla's 17 now, and in a dozen years or so she'll become chief sorcerer of Felport. A lot of things have to happen in the interim – acquiring her cloak, meeting Rondeau... if you've read the novels, you have some idea what's coming. There are some timeline issues, because I didn't completely work out her backstory in chronological detail before I started tossing little throwaway comments into the novels, but I don't think I'll be forced to retcon too much – fortunately, I tend to be vague about when exactly things happened, so I have some continuity wiggle room. Feel free to point out any contradictions you might see... though my response may be to shrug and point and say "Look over there!" and then run hurriedly away while your head is turned.

If I had to guess, I'd say I'm roughly a third of the way through the novella, which means it's likely to be more of a short novel, actually – not as long as the Marla novels, but longer than I'd initially expected. I suspect it'll run 20 chapters or so all together, so it should be finished around Thanksgiving.

Unless I'm wrong. But I'd be surprised if it took me longer than the rest of the year.

Meanwhile, I've already written the first couple of scenes of Chapter 8, which involves a dirty soliloquy and revelations about Artie's main antagonist. And also: girl talk.

Back to Chapter 7