In this week’s episode of Anything to Avoid Working on the Judgement Manuscript, author Paul B. Spence has written about three thousand words of Fimbulwinter after agonizing over how much backstory (summary of what the protagonist was doing in previous novels) is necessary or even desirable. It is the opinion of both the author’s wife and the author’s clone-sibling that the amount of backstory given in the first few chapters of Fimbulwinter is just right for this part of the story.
“They’ll get enough to understand what’s happening now,” says Grace, “and if they want more information, they can read the other books.”
In other news: The author’s clone-sibling has started editing Wheel in the Sky (book three of The Hand of Providence series), which is due out in late spring of 2024. He would have already been editing The Tower, except the author realized recently that he’d left out a small but important scene in that manuscript and needs to make revisions to include it. (The scene involves a Plot Device that deliberately looks like — but is otherwise nothing like — a Very Important Object from a famous story. Leaving it out would totally derail certain storylines for the foreseeable future.)
The household cats are quite unimpressed with all of this. “There are no panthers in either The Tower or Fimbulwinter, so why should we care?” says Tristan.
What does impress these cats? Christmas stockings! Y’see, the older cats have told the “kittens” that every winter, the “humans” put out a fake evergreen tree with sparkly lights on it, and also fuzzy socks with catnip mousies in them. (There are no catnip mousies in the stockings yet; we know better.) Plus, the fuzzy socks are red and fun to play with even before mousies are added.
Tristan investigates.
Soot Sprite suspects there will be treats later.
“What’s THIS?” says Martin.
North of Andover 
Squeeee. Kittehs. ♥ — M.Oniker from WTF Am I On About?
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