Moonlight dries your tears, moonlight hides your fears

The most annoying part of my writing process is figuring out events before motivations. Earlier in the book it was "Ooh, we need a garden party with assassins!" I still haven't figured out exactly what was up with that assassins. Now I'm getting "Ooh, this character needs to be mugged in a kidnapping attempt as soon as she leaves Isyllt's apartment!" Why, I ask my hindbrain. No answer is forthcoming. But I guess we need a kidnapping attempt here.

In the meantime...

The Bone Palace

Words today: 1,000, give or take
Words total: 70,022!

70022 / 100000 words. 70% done!

Darling: n/a
Tyop: she smiled snowly
Research du jour: the history of stoves, various cuts of stones

I really need to get my timeline sorted. Originally the book started in mid-autumn, and I must have envisioned a leisurely sort of plot, because I planned on including a masked ball in mid-winter. I then committed myself to a solstice masque by talking about it in TDC. But I also have the issue of a campaigning army coming home, and unless there are all sorts of delays, a sensible army should be home before winter kicks in. And the antagette is waiting for the army to come back before she unleashes her Evile Plan.

So what should I do? Push the start of the book into winter and come up with some reason the army isn't home yet? Declare all of winter masked ball season and let them have lots? You will have to pry the masque itself out of my cold dead hands.

In which my dog is an idiot

My idiot dog appears to have eaten a vial of BPAL's Aelopile. Or rather, not eaten, but chewed through till she got a mouthful of perfume. She then promptly abandoned the vial in her crate, where it was later found by crime scene techs.

In other news, the amber and citrus are very pleasant when wet, but the cedar comes out too strongly in drydown. I'm not sure how the dog spit changes the reaction. I may need to scrub my hands now, before I have a full blown cedar fever attack.