Wordcount: 12,000/100,000

Awesome title ideas: no further ones.

Body count: 1, 3 in progress. Oh, and 1 owl.

Best moment of the day: the Zen warrior, part 2.

Unexpected moment of the day: recycling a scene from book 2 and opening up tons of fun possibilities for the end game.

Missing research: need to find some juicy anecdotes about Axayacatl’s reign (yup, you guessed it. The best book I had for that is the Hassig, which is still MIA).

Missing bits: we’re down to extra bits, with a little scene that I mean to use at the beginning of chapter 4.

Also met with my French editor Eclipse, and they are made of awesome. Got to do some thinking about forms of address and “tu/vous” in the translation, which should keep me busy for the weekend 🙂
The editor-in-chief also said it was the first time they were working with someone who understood the translation perfectly and could comment on how accurate and how close to the text/the original intent it was, and that it would be an interesting experiment…
BTW, the official French release date for the book is May 2011, with the other books to follow at six-month intervals.

That’s it. I’m off to have Chinese for my birthday dinner, and to find out about my presents (first one was the H’s renewing my Asimov’s subscription, which pleases me no end).