Or: Area Repairman Takes Local Shut-In on Illegal Trip out of Country

So, that fic I've been mentioning? It's now 19k and done as of the 19th. Looking through my logs, I penned the first scene on 3rd of May and started writing it in truth a week later, on the 10th. Average word count per day: ~475, including the over two weeks I spent AFK due to travel. Subtracting those gives over 700 words per day. Similar math yielded ~640 words per day for Heaven and Earth. It's probably accurate enough, though my writing style tends to be more "1.5k one day, nothing the next" depending on how my real life is going. Anyway, this one is T-rated and has a much less boring draft title. Currently at the beta's, as I have yet more travel to do. This post's title is from the summary:

In a world with a dire lack of potable water and where winter is but a memory, Lan Wangji is the tea master's younger brother, living far in the western reaches of New Qian where the locals don't speak his language or look like him. One day, Wei Wuxian comes to him and asks for his company on a trip to replicate a prior expedition that found drinkable water – in the Lost Lands of Scandinavia, outside New Qian's borders and forbidden to enter.

Or, Area repairman takes local shut-in on an illegal journey out of the country.

On getting beta'd, I'm trying out some new things! I've tacked on a modified version of 10 questions to ask a friend who just read your manuscript (since, well, this has two characters who actually show up onpage, and this is not a novel), but I'm also asking about pacing and information release – when did I start a scene too late or too early, are all the scenes at the right places in the narrative, am I releasing information at the right places or do things come out of the left field, that sort of thing. List of questions I'm asking for this specific fic beneath the cut:

( questions )

I've previously mentioned that my creative year tends to come in two arcs of six months each, so I'll do a retrospective in July after I've posted this one! Introducing a tag for such things, since now that I've got chatlogs of the snippets I've sent to my dear beta armadda, I can do a changelog of sorts and show you what stupid choices she convinced me to drop. :P (No, I am not going to set up a git repository on Github for fanfic progress documentation purposes, that would be a terrible idea, self. Really.) Also a proof that my "first drafts" tend to be nigh-identical to the finished product; unless I do rewrites for another reason, the greatest changes are punctuation and word choice. That said, there are a lot of [insert witty conversation here]s and other stuff, and the scathing wit tends to come only in later edits after I've digested the scene some more.

On the side of the fandom this is for, callanthea has engsubbed the first three audio drama eps! Episode 1, Episode 2 & Episode 3. Chromemuffin has written a liveblog reaction post for the first ep under mihanada, to go with the liveblogging of the chapters from the book. The animation will come out on the 9th of July, and we'll get 15 20-min eps, if my sources are correct, and three seasons to tell the story. (S2 and S3 will apparently have 15 30-min eps each, so in total this'll be 1200 minutes or 20 hours of animation. Wow.) Based on trailers and such, I already have things I'm meh about, but I shall talk about that when it actually comes out. The live-action adaptation, Chenqing Commands AKA The Untamed, is filming. Last I heard, the projected air date was 2020. I may or may not make a liveblog/reaction post of any of the items when the next instance of it becomes available with engsubs.

Regardless of Modao Zushi/Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation/Founder of Diabolism becoming a franchise, I shall sit in my corner with the novel. The translation into English can be found for free here.