Mandamon

Thanks @industrialistDragon! Yep, I'm going to have to do something this this chapter. You have some good suggestions. Yep, good point. I think I need to come at this from another angle. This is a much better suggestion than what I have. I'll try to switch it around to something like this. Lol! I'm working on putting all the comments together. I'll have to keep track.

Thanks @shatteredsmooth! Another point in favor of reducing/combining this chapter, so I'm thinking it will go that way. I'm going to start compiling notes and start on the next draft today, so this is just in time! Hm... yeah, this was sort of in a condescending/joking tone, but it might not be going over well. I'l edit.

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!! Heh, I guess I'll look at punching up the chapter first so @Robinski doesn't explode... I think I need to elaborate on what they would do them afterward... I agree, I think I can reduce this some and expand with more interesting content. Who knows! He's been in the background of a lot of events... Oops! Thanks for the catch. This might be a good hook to help punch up the chapter. Lol. I think you should still boldly continue! Thanks, @kais and @Robinski!

Also in for Monday the 6th. We have a full roster next week!

Thanks @Robinski! Good point. I can ramp this up. Glad it's clearer...I'll keep thinking on this Thanks for the catch! I'll make sure I get this right. Referring to what WW was doing. I'll see if I can clear this up. Yep, I was thinking this was too sudden. I think I need to bring S up to speed faster of give him more of an inciting incident. Hmm...I was thinking In would want to go because S is his only real point of stability. I need to pump this up some more. Noted. I'll bring this out more. Great comments as usual! There's definitely some emotion lacking in In's and S's arc. I'm planning on focusing on that a lot more in the next draft.

Good enough. Maybe if I can find a violin somewhere I can accompany...

Yay! I expect we'll see this in the submissions soon?

Now I really want to hear "Still Alive." Are you a soprano?

Lol!

Does it say the performance is filk specifically? Might be able to get away with just a nerdy song...

Thanks @shatteredsmooth! Glad S is working more for you. I think you have a good idea about I bringing him out. I just need to make sure I'm not turning the reader off before that point. Sounds like the two bridge chapters are going back together!

Hello folks! Short chapter this week, and not too much to say about it. See what you think. Reactions on anything/everything else is appreciated, from character notes, to description needed, to grammar and phrasing. Previously: E coaxed S out of his room after a strange chime went off. The maji are interested in S's new house. R got some information from a source, and M wants to restart the Society. R reveals the location of the Coalition's headquarters, but can't get there, and everyone is called to the Assembly, where the Coalition unveils an ancient being. E and R discuss the revelation, S visits the Eff in a private audience, and M continues recruiting. Re manages to meet with the coalition, learns E and I's true species, and confronts E. E trades herself for I and S takes I in. The rest of the cast gathers at the wall, and meet the Eff. They learn some new things, then the chime stops as something comes through the wall. We go back to E, who discovers the Coalition's headquarters, and meets some new, strange friends. Back to S and Co at the wall, who finally find out what the chime was all about.

Lol Yep, might end up combined with E's next chapter. Thanks, @Robinski!

Barreling through as usual, I'll have another chapter for Monday the 29th as well.

Lol. This was originally one big chapter with chapter 9, soooo...maybe I need to go back to that and edit it down. I could probably put her two chapters together as well. Good point. I think I need to speed his arc up in the book and raise either the "proactive" or the "competent" slider. Interesting. I'll see how I can tie this together better, or give more meaning to it. Thanks for the pronoun catches. Thanks @industrialistDragon!

Yep, pretty much correct. I'll be donning one of my steampunk costumes. And The Hat, of course.

I usually attend the Hugos. Anyone with a WorldCon membership can get in. Last year I watched in the overflow room with some WXR alumni so I didn't need to get all dressed up. It's more fun when you can gossip about the nominations with friends ;-)

Ha! Yeah, I thought about that too. Which three are these? Soooo...what would you think if I said book 2 and 3 are going to be basically two halves of part two, and then books 4 and 5 will be two halves of part three? I think some of the slowness here comes from me building things up. I'd be interested to see what you think at the end of this book. I'm planning to also write book 3 this year. Thanks @kais!

Well, I'm in! Got my survey for participation times today. Hopefully they're going to put our panel together since we have at least 3 or 4 confirmed participants.

Can confirm. In related news, have you seen how much the chapters I've been submitting have been torn up? ;-)

I was having trouble formulating my thought for this, but I think @kais has clarified it well: The concept for this is very interesting, but I'd like some more hand-wavium to at least try to address the time travel element. Right now it's pretty shaky in how the knots can keep separate timelines apart and why the energy requirements are tied to the machine itself. I don't need hard science behind it, just a technobabble explanation because it's popping me out of the story as it is. The MC's obsession with the past is pretty overwhelming. It would be nice if the wife could at least acknowledge this rather than just being a sobbing mess all the time. Some of the scene breaks are pretty confusing. It would be helpful especially later on to somehow label which one is which so the reader can follow along better. Again, I like the concept, but I think a little more character development and some polishing over how the time machine works will go a long way. Notes While Reading: pg 1: "I can only think it's a death sentence. The final nail in N coffin. My hands start shaking." --a bit confused as to who N is compared to A, and why the husband immmediately thinks of her. Willing to wait a little to find out. pg 2: "I wonder what she'd be like." --now assuming N is some sort of child lost to time travel hijinks? PG 5: "Thanks to the anchor I can alter the past and still come back to this very moment." --Okaaay...this sounds questionable. pg 6/7: "Ordinarily, this would change the future - and probably would've erased L from ever existing - if it wasn't for the anchor." --I sort of want some explanation for this, even if it's technobabble. pg 8: "She's not in her crib." --sort of confused what happened between the previous section and this one. In the previous one, L is alive. In this one, N is alive, but not sure how. pg 9: "I only realized this when I noticed a second line had appeared on the time graph." --well, that's sort of what I expected to happen. That's why I was wondering how he thought he could change things without changing the timeline. pg 10: "I pondered how I should proceed while looking at the single line on the time graph." --I think this is here to tell us that this version doesn't know about the split timeline, but it comes across as authorial. Why would he mention that it's a single line? pg 10: "She wouldn't either, if she'd just been shot by herself." --Eh? How does he know this? pg 11: "The new anchor ties it all together, fixing our small family to the present" --uh, didn't he learn from the last time? pg 11: "One with two knots - the two anchors I created - and another two branching off from the first." --Confused. I'm having trouble telling which is which. pg 12: "The energy consumption of the anchors is through the roof." --So the machine is generating the energy to keep the timelines together? But he had to boot it up? pg 13: "If I removed the second anchor manually, before the first one fails, I should have a small window of opportunity to act." --relatively confused pg 14: "There's a hole burning in my chest..." --Wait, what happened?

Very interesting! I didn't have a problem with the shifting POVs (but then I rarely do). I read it a second time, first with only the regular text together, and then all the italics together to help me make sense of it. It does stay with me, but mostly because I'm questioning what happened. My main questions/comment: 1) Is the demon the father and the man the son? Or the other way around? 2) Why is he referred to as a demon? There's a very close familiarity between the two, but I don't see a reason to call him a demon. Is it because of physical description? or what the (son, I think) thinks of his father? 3) I'm a little confused at the end with who's speaking to who. From the last set of italics, it seems like the father left to hone his craft (and turned into a demon?). But from the last paragraph, it seems like the demon (the father?) is saying to the man (his son?) that the son left to hone his craft.

I liked it. It keeps the whimsy and addresses what happened to L.

Hello all! We're at the halfway point of the book, back to S, and things are going to start coming together from now on. Please let me know if you come across any promises I didn't keep. Reactions on anything/everything else is appreciated, from character notes, to description needed, to grammar and phrasing. Previously: E coaxed S out of his room after a strange chime went off. The maji are interested in S's new house. R got some information from a source, and M wants to restart the Society. R reveals the location of the Coalition's headquarters, but can't get there, and everyone is called to the Assembly, where the Coalition unveils an ancient being. E and R discuss the revelation, S visits the Eff in a private audience, and M continues recruiting. Re manages to meet with the coalition, learns E and I's true species, and confronts E. E trades herself for I and S takes I in. The rest of the cast gathers at the wall, and meet the Eff. They learn some new things, then the chime stops as something comes through the wall. We go back to E, who discovers the Coalition's headquarters, and meets some new, strange friends.

Heh--no worries on my account. Call it like it is. I see what you're saying. I know I need to restructure this whole plot section to get E there in a different manner, but I'm not sure how yet. Maybe I can add some more useful information here when I do that. Don't know where. I think this is pretty much new. Good catch. I think this ties into E not emoting enough. Thanks @industrialistDragon!