Two pieces of good news: one, people keep sending me cheques for reprints of things. Free money, woo hoo! Two, I know how the first book of Hild ends. And it will make your jaw drop.
So now I know who kills whom, who marries whom, who betrays whom or just runs off, terrified--and when. The backbone is there. For the rest of the day I'll be filling in scene notes, particularly the settings. (Royals were peripatetic in those days; a few weeks here, a few weeks there; eating everyone out of house and home then moving on.) So I'll be having a delightful time imagining the River Calder (young, fresh, fast, full of stones, alders and birch, salmon and bream) and the River Aire (wide, slow, majestic, oaks and elms, otters and kingfishers). Nearly as nice as going to the park myself. Which I'll do tomorrow, I think.
Now it's time for tea and dreaming of bygone days and air that smells more of woodsmoke than diesel.
