March 3: After I sent off my Neyna manuscript, I was having more and more thoughts that certain things should be different in the epilogue. I decided to share it with my writing group. Sure enough, getting it ready for our meeting, I found a sentence in brackets! A note to add more to that part. Other things were sticking in my mind. I wondered if it was too repetitive to have another gathering in the big tree, and a separate good-bye gathering. But sharing with my posse, they said no, don’t cut it. They loved the scene with the elves singing. Going back into it this morning, I saw that, with some tweaking, the first gathering became important to this particular occasion. A huge thing they spotted was I didn’t mention Zami [the toddler] on the trip through space. That solved a quandary. I liked the last conversation between Yanda and Tenali before they left Terlond. To keep the epilogue tight, I didn’t want to have a lot more talk. The baby and controls occupy them.

March 4: I’m writing Sea Elf [part of an anthology] alongside of writing Lost Xentu Book 2. They’ll have similarities but Sea Elf has to be a stand-alone novel. With Neyna sent off, and the first 5 pages of Book 2 written, I decided to start going back over the beginning of Sea Elf. It starts somewhere into A Far Cry. [Writing that note in my journal reminded me to copy Sea Elf over into A Far Cry before I made changes for it to be a stand alone!]

March 5: I feel excited about Lost Xentu book 2 [A Far Cry], It’s feeling so fun. That’s the thing about having built these worlds, lived with these characters. I have a sense of the shape of the book but at the same time, surprise elements are coming into Book 2; I have no idea of them until they’re there. Like the clever tech Yanda’s 8-year-old daughter left behind, revealing intriguing genius. What fun.