172,700 / 172,700 (100.0%)

And I came in well under 180,000 words. That’s great.

I don’t actually know how many drafts it will take to get it right, but it will be a good few.
This it the fun part. I just LOVE tweaking, polishing, cutting, expanding, moving…

Right, here’s how it is shaping up:

BOOK ONE:
Rainlords of the Scarpen
BOOK TWO:
Masters of the Quartern or
Masters of a Quartered Land
BOOK THREE: Beyond a Painted Future
BOOK FOUR:
Beneath A Quartered Sky or
Fall of Random Rain or
Time Of Random Rain

Any better? Preferences anyone?

And here’s another amusing street name for you.
Jln is short for Jalan, which means road or street. So this is Causeway Extension Street. Written in English for some odd reason.
And the street is just a tiny loop for turning around in – because the longer Jln Causeway, linking mainland and a tiny island in Semporna port, is a dead end. The street sign is in fact almost as long as the street…
Tomorrow I shall be putting up some more wonderful shots from the Semporna Islands: How the other half lives…

Have had a great response from everyone both here and on the Voyageronline messageboard about titles…many thanks.

Jenny says don’t use anything about drought because it has negative connotations. Use rain instead. I reckon that’s because she lives in Alice Springs and they don’t get too much rain there. She also doesn’t like Droughtmaster because it is the name of a breed of cattle. (Yep – in fact, it was the name of a cow that inspired me to write the books to start with – so where did you think authors get their inspiration, eh?)

No one likes having both Drouthlord and Droughtmaster as titles, including me, although some find Drouthlord intriguing. There have been a few suggestions for using other words – yep, Gryphon, and Time Lord over on the Voyager board, I like the word parched too…hmm.

Ok, more questions.

• Which is better for Book 1?

Book 3 I am more uncertain about. Several of the main characters end up as prisoners during the course of the book – in both the conventional sense, in prisons, or in other ways – magically, or as hostages, or because of onerous responsibilities that allow no freedom.

Captives of… Caged by…
Thinking aloud here. It is also largely – but not entirely – the tale of the waterpainter character. Hmm.. Images of…

How’s this:

Book Four is not easy either. I like Time of Random Rain as a title, but it is not particularly applicable to the book, as a return to the time of random rain is what they have all been working to prevent.

Aargh.

Yeah, same old story.
I always have trouble with titles.

This coming trilogy is called The Random Rain Quartet. [Ok, it’s 4 books, not 3, if I can sell the four.]

Overall:

163,287 / 180,000 (90.7%)

Percentage revised:

138,910 / 180,000 (77.2%)

More than three-quarters!
I’m getting there…
Tomorrow I will be up in the mountains at 6,000′ which is always good for the creative juices.

Probably won’t get much writing done today, as I have to do the powerpoint presentation for the workshop I am giving in Kinabalu Park. But here’s an update:

Here’s the length completed as of now, compared to the estimation of final length:
(YAY! Up over 90%!)

162,234 / 180,000 (90.1%)

Here’s where I am up to going through reworking the MS. (Remember the words yet to be written aren’t going at the end, but in the body of the book.)

129,525 / 180,000 (72.0%)

If you haven’t entered the competition with the dubious prize, today is your last chance. Tomorrow I will announce the winner.

And if you don’t know what I am talking about, look at the entry for September 8th.

You have to estimate how many words I wrote between Charlottesville , Virginia, and Kuala Lumpur, on the way home. Person closest to the actual number wins. If there is a tie, then all winners will get the dubious prize…

Why dubious? Well, the prize is a free copy, posted to you, of the book I am working on (first volume in The Random Rain Quartet), tentatively called Drouthlord, although I think I am going to change that to Waterlord. Or Watermaster. Or something.

The dubiousness of the prize refers to the fact that I don’t have a publisher for the book as yet. So, who knows, you may win and never get more than an emailed copy! And if I do find a publisher, well, it may be several years before it rolls off the presses.

This is what my word meter looked like last time I was working on Drouthlord, Book One of The Random Rain Quartet (working titles).

147,000 / 180,000 (81.7%)

This is what it looks like when I finished today…

148,707 / 180,000 (82.6%)

Looks much same visually, but it has actually crept up a bit. My daughter has to go to work, and I am still under that compulsary rest regime, so what else is there to do but write? Actually I did quite a bit more than the meter indicates, as I also deleted and rewrote…

I love my work.

Exploring Malaysia on this avitourism project was tremendous fun, even if I did lose pints of blood to leeches and ruin two pairs of trekking shoes and a pair of sandals, not to mention my knees. Trouble is, after the fun bit ends, you have a project paper to write. A huge project paper, sort of along the the lines of a BFF*. Ok, well maybe not that big, but still.

As I am sick of entering birding tour itineraries (for people who have WAAAAY more money than I have) into a database on a Sunday afternoon, I shall proceed to play with that lovely word-counting thingimijig. As this can’t be of interest to anyone but me, you can stop reading now.

This is for Drouthlord, first book of the Random Rain Quartet.

147,000 / 180,000 (81.7%)

Wow, its 81% DONE.
Nah – it lies in its wormy bronze teeth…

As I had not looked at it since 2002, I am going through it rewriting as I go. And if you look at how much I have done of that, the little thingymijig doesn’t look so healthy…

13,002 / 180,000 (7.2%)

Hmmm.
Does anyone but the author concerned really want to know all this?

*Big Fat Fantasy