I’ve slightly changed the way I’m writing the book, after two years of having a super-strict schedule. Up until this and the previous chapter, I would sit down on a Tuesday evening and write the entire chapter, then post it on Wattpad. Every week, without fail, unless I was significantly Read more…
Double-bill of chapter notes here, starting with ‘The Rules of Magic’. This chapter does what it says in the title, more-or-less. Practically speaking it is about clarifying some of the new systems that are in play (well, they’ve always been in play – the reader just didn’t know about them Read more…
Bit of a bumper session of The Mechanical Crown chapter notes today, as I’ve got a bit behind. Here goes: Waiting for Gods ‘Waiting for gods’. See what I did there? Anyway, this chapter is one of those pregnant pauses that TMC’s narrative design enables me to do now and Read more…
This chapter is called ‘Traversing neurons’, or: How to disguise an infodump. It was an especially challenging chapter (I feel like I’m saying that a lot these days) because not only did it have to do a lot of heavy-lifting of the plot and backstory, it also had to depict Read more…
Read it here! The very first chapter of The Mechanical Crown is called ‘Survival’, and introduced Tranton Seldon. That this chapter is called ‘Survivors’ and also is told from his perspective is not coincidental. Above all else, surviving is what Tranton Seldon does – whether he actually wants to or Read more…
Read it here. Starting a new arc of the story is always a challenge. While The Mechanical Crown is a single, on-going, novelistic story, it’s also structured somewhat like a television show: therefore chapter 1 of arc 6 is like the first episode of a new season, and that’s often Read more…
Read it here: https://www.wattpad.com/651563855-the-mechanical-crown-towards-apotheosis This chapter marks the end of Arc 5 of the book. It’s a big one, operating on a scale unlike anything we’ve really seen in the story so far. An entire floating city, tilted on an angle, falling through clouds towards the ground? Go on then. There’s Read more…
Read it here: https://www.wattpad.com/648721651-the-mechanical-crown-the-fall Sometimes a chapter expands unexpectedly, this one being a case in point. The original plan was for Tranton to reach the spire and meet with Fenris fairly quickly, thus bringing the arc to a close. Instead, it ended up as a two-parter with this one focusing on Read more…
So the interesting thing about this chapter is how it reflects on some of the earlier chapters. I would expect readers by now to have at least suspected that Queen Anja was in fact the disguised Kraisa, even if they weren’t 100% sure. This is not so much a twist Read more…
Continuing the chapter notes catch-up, here’s a big one on ‘Approaching Thunder’: I knew this chapter was coming from the moment I started writing this book, back in 2016. In a lot of ways, everything has been leading towards the end of this chapter, even if readers weren’t aware of Read more…