December Newsflash #2

This fortnight I've been working on Honor Bound Chapter 7, and have finished off the Royal Affairs expanded epilogue! The epilogue is going off to the copyeditor as we speak. I expect it to be released early next year so keep your eyes out for it - I'm really looking forward to people getting to revisit the world and characters of Royal Affairs once again.

I finished the draft of Chapter 7 and did some retroactive tweaks to earlier chapters once I'd done that. I posted about this elsewhere too:

Among other things, I’m feeling the need to go back to earlier  chapters and add in bit-part named characters so that when I then put  them in peril, which I’m currently doing, the player goes “uh oh, hope  that person doesn’t get eaten by crocodiles!” or “oh thank goodness,  those crocodiles know what they’re doing”, rather than “who? am I meant  to know who this crocodile-victim is?” But I also want to get through  the chapter, so a lot of it is a step up from placeholder text before I  figure out who exactly the crocodiles* are menacing and how to make the  player care about it.

*there are no crocodiles, but I wish there were.

And I've done some work on planning Chapter 8 too. It is a bit of a tricky one as there are a lot of moving plot parts that I want to give as much breathing room as possible, and I want it to flow naturally into Chapter 9. I think there will probably be some elements I need to cut or rework, but that's something to noodle at gently over the rest of the month - I'm not fully back at work until the new year, and am very much in need of a break.

Honor Bound current wordcount: 282063

Honor Bound's fortnight wordcount: 9642

Honor Bound current average playthrough: 69298

Behind the Scenes:

I read Going Postal by Terry Pratchett this fortnight which I loved. I was a huge fan of Terry Pratchett as a teenager but stopped reading Discworld after Night Watch. I'm returning to it now, and am enjoying it greatly. Going Postal felt so current that I kept having to remind myself that it was written in 2004.

Health has been up and down. My resolutions for the new year include yoga at least every other day, and getting a massage as soon as my shoulder or hip starts hurting; towards the end of the year, my shoulders haven't been good at all thanks to various stresses. I'm also quietly hoping to practise cooking this year, as I find it a bit scary doing more complicated dishes and would like to get more confident with it.

My favourite bit:

I really enjoyed writing the responses that the Honor Bound characters have after this bit happens - they all respond to the situation in different ways and I hope to surprise some people with it. <3

Sneak peek:

I don't always post anything as specific as this, but since it's the holidays... there's some very sweet text from the epilogue in the attachment.

Best of luck to everyone over the festive season! It can be a hard time for a lot of reasons, but I hope for some comfort and joy for you, and am thinking of you. See you in 2024!