I seem to be moving again finally on the work-in-progress, after a hiccup-y phase that lasted for several weeks. Which is good. I worked out about three weeks ago what the problem was with it, but then had other commitments which got in the way of working on it. It's not a sequel to Living With Ghosts -- I started writing it well before the latter sold, and took a deliberate decision to work on something that was not directly connected. In some ways this is good, because it gives me a relatively free hand. In other ways.... This book -- working title The Grass King's Concubine -- is set in the same world but at a later period, and there are some conscious differences in the ways I've presented it. There's a city which may or may not be Merafi -- I think it is, but it's changed a great deal. There are factories and riots. There's a frozen steppe. A lot of the narrative is set in an underworld (not the Underworld, precisely, but a world belonging to a different set of beings and rules to the one that contains Merafi). And there are ferret women. Indeed, they came first, ambushing me one day into writing a scene which turns out to be the first in the book. (The first scene I wrote for <i>Living With Ghosts</i> is in the middle. It's the one where Thiercelin talks to Valdarrien's ghost in his room. The second scene I wrote was the confrontation between Gracielis and Valdarrien over Thiercelin.) So far, Grass King is proceeding in a linear fashion -- I'm usually a linear writer -- but the current stuff is backfill, replacing some material that I've never been happy with. At least it's progressing again. Which is good.