Monday, August 14, 2023

Daily Diary, Day 1079: Regular monday, clean, walk, Rio the collie comes to play for an hour, and then I showered, did laundry, finished another post, check and saw that my pre-orders on Amazon are now up to 309, and started to work on the In Ddaera's Embrace. Then a phone call, lunch, and after this post I have about 45 minutes before time to take off for my "wellness" exam.

I am trying to figure out the timing of this next novel. The action in Tides of Acerba ended in November of 167 AA (167 years After Arrival of the ten ships from Earth to their new home, the planet they call New Eden and the natives call Ddaera.

Between Mountain and Sea, the first book in this series was set in period between May and August of 165. The second book, Under Two Moons opens almost 2 years later in April of 167. Through Ddaera's Touch, the third book, opens immediately after Under Two Moons, and ends in June of 167, so 5 months have passed when Tides of Acerba opens.

So a couple of issues I need to consider. First, not too much time can have passed because I have set up that there is a plan to rescue people from a prison in the next six months or so--and this is one of the main plot arcs of the story.

Second, I need to take into consideration seasons. The main characters live in the northern hemisphere, and I want to open the book with the matriarch, Hen Nain, and my main protagonist, Mei Lin, hiking up in the western mountains, which means the action needs to start no earlier than spring of 169 AA. At the same time, the prison is in the very bottom of the southern hemisphere, which means its seasons are the opposite, so summer is going to be winter there, and I need to take that in consideration. I even spent some time yesterday looking into the weather at Cape Horn, the tip of South America, which could be similar to the weather on Atra where the prison is located, to give some ideas about what my rescuers would have to take into consideration when making their plans.

Finally, there is so much going on in preparation for the rescue, that I can't have everything happen in just a few weeks' time, which tend sto be my preference (if you look at both my mysteries and my science fiction stories-they often occur over no longer than a month.)

But of course, this is all fun figuring it out!

I wish I could remember where I saw this bloom last week, so I could go and find out what it looked like when it opened. But pretty even like this.