The timezone shifts in Portal Woes have been on my mind all week. Two of my sisters flew to Russia on Monday and they’re now eight hours ahead of us. That’s been interesting experience on this end—thinking about what they’re experiencing in adjusting to that kind of change has vividly reminded me of writing PW.

Book 3 doesn’t have that many timezone jumps, for which I’ve found myself profoundly grateful. (So far, I haven’t had to resort to a complicated spreadsheet to keep everybody straight. :D) It’s had a few unexpected plot twists though.

As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve been looking forward to writing this particular book in The Guardians since I first started plotting the series. I didn’t realize until I started writing it, however, how much of the story I was anticipating telling occurs  after the book’s midway point…leaving me with half a book to write before I even get there. 😛 Still, it’s been fun picking up where PW left off and running with it. (I never cease to be amazed how touching one plot aspect lights up three more I need to consider.) I should cross the halfway point sometime next week.

Still don’t have a title, but I’ve got several possibilities. I’m sure it’ll shake itself out soon.

TOSOTH’s edits are progressing nicely. I finished all the minor changes; now I’m working on the major changes. It’s a bit daunting to look at a stack of manuscript sheets all marked up with orange ink (not usually an orange fan, but when I thought of TOSOTH, that was the color that came to mind), but once I really get into the sections, they’re not quite as bad as they seem. Most of the sections that need to be fixed are either places where I need more details, or else earlier scenes that need to be tweaked to fit later scenes. I’m hoping to have TOSOTH finished by the end of the month and off to beta readers, but we’ll see how it goes.

My sisters going to Russia has also made me think about global publishing, and how thanks to the internet ebooks in particular are accessible to people in other countries. (Speaking of which,  Kris Rusch had a really good article about global publishing this week.) Currently, Russia is one of the countries that doesn’t have much in the way of digital stores for her citizens to buy or publish ebooks, but it looks like Amazon is working to expand into Russia. This is very cool from both a reader and a writer’s perspective. Affordable ebooks (whether in Russian, English, or whatever) = everyone wins.

I can’t help thinking it’s a great time to be reader. (Or a writer. :D)