Well, I haven't blogged in a while, so I'm just writing this to say that I'm on vacation in Charleston, South Carolina for the next week. I have Internet access at the place I'm staying, but for the most part I'll be out and about (at beaches or sightseeing) during the days and will probably be mostly gone from BZPower and other sites I frequent (though, to those who have my e-mail address, Gtalk address, or AIM screen name, I will still be answering e-mails and will try to get on AIM and Gtalk once a night). I'm hoping to use the week away from most of the Internet to write.

Book 7, which I decided like 2 years ago would be called What If? (breaking the series tradition of four-word titles ), is doing well so far. I'm almost 3 chapters (or perhaps more accurately, about 10,000 words in, because I've been kind of jumping around as far as chapters go) in so far, but I'm hoping to get a lot done over this vacation. The book so far is a lot different from anything I've done - it's largely episodic rather than a flowing narrative. It's also told entirely in first person, except for a short scene at the beginning of each chapter, inspired by how in crime dramas you might see the murder being committed in the first scene while the rest of the show is the characters trying to figure out what led to what the viewer saw at the beginning. In this case, since the premise is that the characters are going to all the alternate timelines, figuring out what made them alternate, and fixing them to line up with the main one, we see the first major divergence from the main timeline in that first scene (though I will be shamelessly using the butterfly effect, so what you see in the first scene will rarely ever be the first divergence point). Again much different from my previous epic is the tiny cast - just three main characters. Many series regulars (the other Toa-Kal, the Dyteeli characters, Onathei, Auserv and his team, etc.) will be appearing, but because the group is working on a different timeline each chapter, the characters besides the main three don't stay consistent. One chapter, the divergence point might involve Dyteeli, so we'll see Barnoka, Krandorn, Zirralo, etc., and the next chapter it'll be on Metru Nui and that chapter won't have any series regulars. I don't plan to introduce many or any new characters, since I have (I recently counted) 96 named characters already available for me to use, but I will be using many more canonical characters whereas previously I had only used the Barraki and a few Dark Hunters.

When I get home next Sunday or the day after, I will post a proper preview of Book 7 with a short excerpt. The book should begin to be posted on July 19th. As per usual, plans are for it to have a prologue, an epilogue, and 20 chapters. Updates will generally be on Fridays (except for the Prologue and Epilogue, which will both probably be posted on Mondays). As usual, anyone who wants a PM notification at the time the book is launched can feel free to ask. Since Book 6 was rather sparingly reviewed (by which I mean - only Takuta-Nui reviewed at all ), I'm kind of hoping for a larger audience this time around, so I would be more than happy to even give notifications every chapter if it would get me back up to the number of regular reviewers I had during Books 4 and 5. It just feels kind of pointless to be writing for only one person, and while at this point I'm finishing the series just for my own gratification no matter what anyone else does, it is nice to know people like what I'm doing, and if they don't like it, it's even nicer to know, because it can help me improve as I continue.

Anyway, guess I'll end this entry here. I will be back on June 6th, hopefully with another solid 10,000 words under my belt.