originally posted by Ben Crofts
"By Janny Wurts on Saturday, July 04, 2020 - 09:55 am: Edit Post
Hi Ben Crofts - nope. We have insanity and a science blind cowboy for a governor…the curve is straight up.
By Julie on Monday, July 06, 2020 - 07:56 pm: Edit Post
Ben, if you know where the saner parts of the US are, please let us know."
Sorry, can't help you - I'm an ocean and thousands of miles away - still looks scary even from here!
Interesting news about the site getting a change.
OK, status update: I have hacked out the final scene in 8 main - after a bit of refinement tomorrow, it should be ready for test.
That puts the page count entire at 522, as of this moment.
Do go check out the Website Makeover so superbly accomplished in updated code by Brian!
https://paravia.com/JannyWurts/
originally posted by Jon Moss
Janny,
So good to hear from you. Excellent progress on the last volume. Brian has done an amazing job on the website.
Hope you and Don are well.
Ciao, Jon
originally posted by Danielle Tilley
Updated website looks great and love to see the progress on the book.
Hey Jon! Nice to see you here.
I have cleared 8 main through test. Started the first subchapter in 8 set, during a very hot wait, in a car, today.
Page count is nearing 530.
Bets are on to see if I can finish out this chapter set by month's end.
Do, everyone, feel free to spread the link to the revised website around.
Despite some crazymaking interruptions, I've got the first subchapter of 8 set down in draft; now tuning detail in the last scene, and it goes out for test.
page count is 550.
I am looking to wrap this chapter set (let's see if I can do it!) by the end of the month.
9 set will blow all the gaskets…just sayin' fair warning - don't hurl the book across the room so hard you break it at this stage, because 10 set cracks on into the denouement(s) - oh yeah, there will be a cascade of em, all explosive. Trust here, you will have to finish to see the completion of the grand finale. It will take a few chapter sets, yet, to achieve the wrap. All worth the journey, I promise.
originally posted by Laneth Sffarlenn
The hype is R E A L!!
Sincerely wishing you all good vibes & tidings, and diverting Awen and muses you’re way for this most intense of journeys through the opening stages of the close.
Here’s to the beginning of the end! SKÅL!
originally posted by Melanie Trumbull
You want us to let you know, fellow member,
where the saner parts of the country are?
Well, this is not a boast exactly, but where I am, it is telling to observe manoeuvers and machinations going on.
It has been my good fortune and blessing to be in treatment in an unusually good psychiatric clinic during the pandemic, where there is good clinical staff, good nursing care, and at least an illusion of security and safety. Of course the lockdown and the pandemic itself is stressful for everyone inside and outside of the clinic; and my heart goes out to the clinic staff who put themselves on the line, taking care of us patients. But I can't personally imagine a better place to be under present conditions.
The clinic is in Massachusetts, where there is not only a state government in place that is diverse enough to check and balance itself in a rather dynamic fashion (although it gets contentious at times), but the registered voters are for the most part well educated, well read, and unafraid to speak up, from the Town Meeting format upwards to the state capitol. There is already a well-established convention of activism and journalism which questions and investigates; the pandemic has made this collective sentinel, if anything, more vigilant and more alert.
My favorite example: the governor immediately took the stance of putting the health of his state's constituents first, with directives, protocols, clearly worded restrictions. That was in public, of course. And behind the scenes, the governor was up to, well, what politicians are often up to, as one of the activist-watchdog-entities disclosed.
One of the starkest spectacles during the tragedy of the coronavirus pandemic, nationwide, has been the plight of inmates in the jails and the prisons, who live in the conditions that are the most likely to feed the rate of COVID-19 infections. And what was the governor quietly doing? He was manipulating a federal grant for money to, heaven help us, build yet more prisons … until the activists publicized this in local media.
Sane? Well, at least the constituents are reasonably sane here.
Done it!
8 set is a wrap.
I will be starting 9 main tomorrow (preliminary bits worked on today) after I replenish a very depleted refridgeratior.
OK, 9 set/main chapter is underway…stepping into the very heart's core of this novel, triggers are all cocked, now we go 'BANG!'
PS - I have test posted to several threads in the topics for Cycle of Fire and two of the standalones. They both appeared to be working…(and that's good, whispers, because…you'll see)
Despite a week peppered with interruptions, I have nailed the draft of 9 main at 32 pages, before the touch ups that will take it to test.
And I've got the first subchapter of 9 set already underway, it's running very hot (action!).
And I know very clearly what the followup of the second subchapter will be (and also, ten set).
So a record run, with the up to the moment draft page count at 577.
This positions me to get all of 9 set done by the end of this month (and meybe a bit into ten set, we'll see)
Some of the scenes that are being written now have been 'cooking' for decades…
If a pin drops in this forum and nobody's present to hear it, did it strike at all?
Grin - hope you're all busy and well.
STATUS UPDATE: Chapter Set 9 is completed and out for test, and my brain is wrung to a rag. So many dots connecting in this one and the build is ON for the climactic chapters.
Page count, if you're curious, in draft: 615
I have notes set down for ten set. Getting wild and wooly, as the pages now overtop the box, and the cats are just pleased to dump them over on the floor, if they can. One of the ways I know I'm over the hump and into the last stages of a manuscript, I start scraping the bottom of the box of Large Silver Paperclips. At the end, there will be next to none.
originally posted by Daisy
Nothing I like better than a book written by janny wurts but to have a book which is more than 600:pages as well is just a dream.
Thank you for continuing to satisfy my dream janny.
Even though itÂs barely Spring, Summer has started here in Queensland with temperatures already over 30 degrees Celsius which is over about 85 Fahrenheit for people in the US. Wondering how winter disappeared so quickly. Only 3 months until Christmas!!!
originally posted by DarthJazy
Trying to keep libraries running eats my time and a new grand daughter. I am sorry could not get mommy to go for Elaira but I did get her to name her mara jade.
originally posted by Neil
Thanks for the update Janny. I tend to see the odd update on social media these days rather than checking in here (but having just watched "the social dilemma" on netflix (documentary warning of side-effects of social media) I may stop using facebook, etc. but I really like Reddit for discussion purposes (e.g. books/films/TV) and perhaps we ought to start a SoM predictions conversation again?
I picked up curse of the mistwraith looking for Arithon dealing with a crossbow bolt…not sure why now…I am in the middle of MiddleMarch (having recently got stuck in Midnight Tides…but got through "Small Great Things" but I am digressing more than Robin McKinley does…) got side-tracked into Sethvir healing Asandir in Fugative Prince (I was searching for a comment about the options mistwraith may have had re: cursing the brothers.
I expect to see Mistwraith being freed - one way or another - in the new book 
And I wonder whether Arithon will remain on friendly terms with the Fellowship. The Koriani are going to dig up some history but what could be the impact? Will he Biedar will be able to accomplish their patient objectives (and is there a conflict with F7 there too)? What if the F7's agenda does not match the Paravian agenda? They are bound but there seems to be ambigous tensions here? Do the paravians foresee an F7/compact failure of some kind? Are some F7 members more trustworthy than others from the Paravian perspective?
I suppose the more WoLaS books I have seen the more I find I really cannot predict much at all and have stopped trying (almost?)
Hi Neil, yes, Facebook is drastically wrong; I only go there for bare minimum announcements and the presence is a fan page, not a 'personal' page.
Any social media with 'foreign startup investment' has skeletons in the closet. And I've seen crossover from airlines sharing legal name/credit card info with retail sites. Ugly stuff…
r/fantasy on reddit is so well run by the moderators that it is at least a sane place to discuss things; so I still post there. Twitter is making an effort to clear some false accounts and push back on bad info, but it's way minimal; so I am pretty much announcements there and following research scientists, etc.
One thing about r/fantasy: you can start a readalong discussion so if you are wanting to talk on a forum, that would be the place to do that. There is also a discussion of Peril's Gate (new readers) starting up at GoodReads, in the Fantasy Buddy Reads group - probably starting Saturday or so.
The scene from Curse of the Mistwraith you may be looking for with the crossbow bolt is likely in the last chapter sets: main chapter XXVIII, titled Culmination, it occurs several pages into that action sequence.
There are several areas where the Mistwraith's curse is dealt in depth: the fourth main chapter titled Convocation (with Verrain present) in Ships of Merior; not sure precisely which thing you are looking for, or I could pinpoint it. There is another mention in the second subchapter of VII set, Ships of Merior - it's titled Attrition, whdn Luhaine resurveys the wards over Rockfell.
The subtle ways the Mistwraith worked on Arithon is detailed in the Maze sequence in Peril's Gate- which many readers blast right over thinking it is nothing but a 'recap' - how maddening!!! - when for the first time we see events Actually from Arithon's point of view (not another character's assumption) AND we see him recognize how perniciously he was manipulated by the Mistwraith's design…that sequence illuminates So Much - but hey - I can't give impatient people depth of discernment.
The other scene you may want to look at IN DEPTH with care occurs in Curse of the Mistwraith, main chapter XI Desh-thiere. The attack launched on Arithon and Lysaer in the ruin at night - HUGE…there is so much packed in here, and not yet unpacked, between the lines. That scene will figure Very Big, you have no idea yet.
Also the scene in Etarra's armory when Sethvir and Asandir deal with Lysaer's possession - you'd find it in Curse of the Mistwraith, the subchapter titled Backlash in the XIII Etarra chapter set.
In fact - this last volume: SO much Is Not Window Dressing from the earliest book; and onward. It is an extraordinarily intricate web. You Will See.
Not even the test readers fully grasp it yet - because the unfolding action in Song's sets X and XI will level a whole lot of assumptions and rack it all up to a new level.
There is an immense amount written in plain sight And between the lines (but referenced in subtle ways, like characters' being reticent on purpose!! Watch for It~) so people who blast on through and read once, think 'whelp that's done' probably, no certainly, missed the mountain in plain view.
We are going to fix the forum, but anybody can make a readalong anywhere any time. This series is Not the Empire which can be grasped in full in one sweep. Not Even close.
As to your list - you will read and find out…and no, I don't think you can quite predict this one; and some people may toss the book THINKING they know (hah, how wrong they will be if they did not finish it!!)
so you are in for the rollercoaster ride of them all. Here's a teaser for ya: Main chapter X in Song of the Mysteries is titled Field of Glory…and if you THINK you can guess what that implicates - hahahaha, evil grin - think again.
And - if you haven't read the six shorts, yet, there is a lot in them that will flesh out what you thought you knew.
originally posted by Judy
I'll pick up that pin
Re FB: what I do is have a small group of friends, mostly family and my horse buddies, and restrict everything to friends. Don't go outside that group and use the Hide feature a lot.
Re impatient readers: I find myself quickly reading the very first time I get a new WoLaS since I can't wait to see what happens. I try to slow myself down but don't usually succeed. Then as soon as I finish, I reread it taking my time and looking for all those details.
originally posted by Neil
Thanks Janny - you are doing some of my research for me and taking some of the fun away too 
I do remember a lot about the books still despite not having reread much in the last decade. A kindle makes it a lot easier to find things these days.
Field of Glory? Hmm… my first guess is that glory is for the townborn so are they "winning"?
Who could have predicted Biedar or Necromancers in book 1…I am not even sure drakes are mentioned much at that point. I have read 5-6 of the shorts so I remember some background on Koriani, Biedar, Verrain and Davien.
Oh dear, so sorry, I would not want to spoil your fun for anything, looked like your question was asking (and I didn't pinpoint all of the referenced material, anyhow…there's some left off).
Vol I had a mention of necromancy, and the editors took it out; (or else, it is there in Vol I, but got removed from Ships of Merior - one or the other, it got dropped by editor/one point I chose not to protest; I dug in on the stuff that really mattered most).
I know for sure there is no ref. to Great Drakes in Vol I, and that was deliberate - since they are other than the normal depiction of dragons in fantasy literature, I wanted to bring them on gradually, closer to the actual moment they played for real in the books so that the 'assumption' of what they were would not interfere - the actual, I chose to have it like cold water in the face - different.
Vol I did have refs to their contributions to Athera - in plenty. So the 'hint' is there in the broad fabric of what you do encounter in that book.
One thing you can look forward to: the ancient history of Athera plays alot more strongly in this, the final volume of this series, as all the various threads converge.
How the series is received, in total, will determine how much I may choose to pursue other angles of the history - in story form and art.
originally posted by Kate Roberts
I'd never gone in for the re-read thing until I hit your books Janny. I'm now in the process of re-reading them all again while I patiently wait for Songs to come (and I'm happily waiting) I read books 1-10 of WoLaS all in one go - but being a slow reader it took me the best part of a year (it was the BEST year!) I've only started re-reading as I was frustrated at not being able to find anything else worthy of reading while I waited. I'm going to be at a total loss when this series wraps up, yet I'm desperate to find out. It will be complete book grief and a whole roller coaster of emotions.
I'm half way through Mistwraith and I can't decide if it's so much that I missed things first time around (possible) or that it all now makes so much more sense with more context. For example I'd never really realised how much of the story was laid out in the first few chapters of Mistwraith. Or the thrill of meeting characters for the first time again after we have come to know them so well through the development of the world and story.
I'm sure you've answered the question before somewhere else, but I'd be much obliged to hear. What is the best order to read the WoLaS short stories in? I think they will be next of the list to read now that I've been gifted a Kindle thingy