The week after the meeting had actually gone incredibly well.
What a way to start a chapter! Bam! A week has passed.
I hate both documenting every day and blithely jumping forward. That’s a bit of a conundrum. Right now, I’ve got 39 days in 26 chapters, which is pretty much every day. A lot, but not all, chapters end with “and they went to sleep”.
As I’ve said several times, book one is going to end with the first snowfall. It’s north western South Dakota, so sometime in October is not out of the question.
the earliest recorded first snowflake (trace snowfall) occurred on September 13, 1970.
That’s for Kier (which is really Buffalo). It’s also unsourced from an AI, but I can run with it.
With the “get ready for winter” theme going on, I think 60 days from apocalypse start to book end is awfully fast. Our intrepid heroes don’t even show up in Kier until after the first month.
Say three months with first snowfall on 13 Oct. That puts the start date in mid July. That is more what I have envisioned. That also means that calendar-time wise, I’m only halfway there. I need 50 more days.
Interestingly, I’m keeping track of “days since”. I’m not keeping track of day-of-week. I don’t think it’s been mentioned at all.
50 days in 10 chapters is about a week per chapter. That opening will get old – but possibly amusing – if I use it on every chapter from here on.
I did say that I wanted 36 chapters. Be careful what you ask for.
Rejected image: Orange blush under the eyes again. The orange on the wolf isn’t quite right, either. It’s also just plain, not awful.
How am I going to fill that time?
Chapter 26 will see Marcy into her dungeon training. It’s going to be years for her, but every outside week a dungeon run with a group from town. I’d like it to be The Squad, but I’m not sure they’ll be around much. They’re off claiming the Bakken oil fields while learning to be wolves. They just left (day 28, iirc) and they have 21 days to do it. The first two weekly runs could be skipped and they return early.
How does that timing work out? I need the spatial storage before the end so they can use it for silos. If this started in mid-July and we’re on day 40, it’s early September. The Squad will be returning mid September (late Sep is the deadline; they’ll be early). Early October is pushing harvest, but it’s early October, now, and the weather is gorgeous. I think I can legitimately risk it, especially considering all the unusual factors involved that can (be made to) delay things. If four weeks outside is going to be three years (36 months) inside, a weekly run would be every 9 months for her.
Nine months is a long time to be alone with only a few hours of companionship to break it.
Some recent book had an “inheritance” that was four years at a magic school, which was basically a custom dungeon, where everyone but our hero was a construct. I _really_ didn’t like it because he made friends with the NPCs, who he knew were NPCs, and we (the readers) got emotionally invested in them, then they just turned off. I don’t want to do that. The instructor(s), no problem. Friends are strange – like having an AI boyfriend.
I want to leverage the dungeon, which has a party size limit of six, and I want to run the entire militia through it. Said militia doesn’t formally exist, yet (at day 40). Perhaps people are running through it every day and Marcy goes along when they’re short a party member and the timing works out. At a 1:36 ratio, day/night cycles will be off, frequently. Maybe about every four months for her, which would be about every three days on the outside. That will work. Perhaps more frequent at the end as she gets stronger and needs bigger challenges to overcome – but she’s going to end up solo because she’ll have three years of leveling under her belt when everyone else has under three months. I’m going to need to write this out day-by-day with inside/outside times.
Hmmm. She’s going to be ridiculously over powered when she gets out. I want the magic. I hadn’t considered all the other implications. I’m sure it will be fine.
That gives me two weeks (days 40 thru 54) to fill with townsfolk and two more weeks (days 54 thru 68) with townsfolk and The Squad. Then harvest in early October, which will easily take a week, if not two (days 68 thru 80ish).
Ten more days for the Cattle Drive? There’s a barn raising (or two or three) involved. It doesn’t need to complete before the book ends. It could still be happening the background and finish in book two. That’s hardly a cliff hanger.
I think I have a plan. At least for now. They have been known to change.
