T. K. Arispe

Today's writing notes:

Working on: Skydwellers third edition

I want to take this opportunity to set a couple of things straight about the story, because I've gotten some comments from readers who I think misunderstood some points:

- This story takes place in a completely separate world from Earth. It is not a post-apocalyptic Earth. Yes, a drastic civilization-ending event happened about thirty thousand years ago in the Skydwellers world, but it is totally unrelated to our world. (Assuming that, on average, stars have the same amount of proper motion in that world's sky as in our sky, it would take about thirty thousand years for the constellations to look appreciably different, prompting Mathchis's comment when she sees the night sky for the first time since her reawakening.)

- Rohui and Miette are not an item. Rohui is 19 and Miette is 9--their relationship is that of an older brother and a younger sister. Maybe I need to make Miette's age clearer or something. There are no romantic relationships in this book.

Cut out a lot more Wilder snark because Wilder is not really a snarky person. Also snark is not all it's cracked up to be, honestly. Overdoing it just makes characters seem acerbic. I also altered Chapter 5 quite a bit--before, it was about Wilder and Rohui arguing and Rohui realizing that he's being condescending toward Wilder's culture, but now their conversation is more about Wilder feeling stuck on the farm. I think this will better help lead up to his decision to run away with Rohui. It also aids in his characterization, because in the previous versions Wilder didn't really have much in the way of dreams or life goals, but now we see that he yearns to explore the world outside of the farm and wants to do something with his life beyond being a farmer, and he's frustrated by being kept under his father's thumb.

Another fairly big change in this early part of the book is that I incorporated Pops more. I always felt like he needed some closure, because from what we see of him, he seems pretty close to Wilder, and I didn't like the idea of just leaving him hanging once Wilder decides to help Rohui. So now Pops gets a bit more of a proper character arc, even if he is just a minor character.