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14/5/23 Update
🕑 Added 2023-05-14 13:49:11 +0000 UTCSo, while I have everyone here...
I'm like 70% finished with the edits for volume 1. No illustrations commissioned yet, which will be why publishing is being drawn out to June at the very least, but I'll get there. In the meantime, what sort of book-exclusive chapter to you guys want to see in Volume 1 (besides a map, yes, I know)?
So far, I'm thinking some kind of chapter with Lori playing with the children, perhaps a Mikon chapter where she actively makes the decision to go from 'there can only be one' on to 'the more the merrier'.
As to illustrations... there's the cover I've always wanted to have, where Lori is dreaming she's a great, rich and powerful Binder while she's slipping on the ground with a threadbare blanket as cover, Lori seeing the first dragon for the first time...
On the horizon, just beginning to rise over the curve of the world, was the dragon.
For a moment, Lori stared. She couldn't help it. She'd never seen a dragon with her own eyes before, and the descriptions and sketches and illustrations in books seemed… nonsensical. At first she thought a wall of clouds stretched from east to west, not unlike the driving rains. And then she blinked and suddenly it seemed too thick to be clouds. They didn't roil like clouds did, getting bigger, or rising or falling slowly. It roiled like boiling water, bubbling and expanding and moving right before her very eyes, faster than any cloud. Bubbles would erupt into eerily silent lightning of many colors. Brilliant green, dull and burning red, even a light-defying dark purple that seemed black, slowly moving horizontally like the reaching arms of some impossibly long, narrow limb.
Even as she watched, one of the streaks of lightning bent in the middle like an elbow, sweeping it's already extended length towards the ground before touching the earth and suddenly it wasn't lightning but a great cone, it's point touching the ground… and then tears seemed to open all along the cone's length, and Lori found herself staring at eyes of–
Someone grabbed her and spun her around quickly, breaking her gaze.
"Don't stare at something's eyes," Rian said, looking intently at the ground. "Things never like it when you meet their eyes. They think you're challenging them."
...and of course, the obligatory illustrations of Lori tastefully naked.
Yes, the reason I have those chapters of Lori doing laundry was so I could have that illustration.
She went back to hitting her clothes with a rock to get them clean.
At one point, she thought she heard someone calling her name, but as she was naked and completely wet with laundry soap and water and was getting into a good rhythm, she ignored it. It eventually faded, meaning it couldn't have been very important or they'd have kept bothering her for whatever stupid reason.
Finally, after long, tiring work, Lori finally finished her laundry. It wasn't all her clothes– that would just be silly– but it was still a lot. She had to take care because until they managed to start viably producing some sort of fabric from ropeweed, then the nearest source of new clothes was Covehold and that was a long way off.
Should probably have portraits of Lori and her supporting cast made too. But until then, these can serve as stand-ins.
