The joys of novel writing

So I'm reading through my first draft and I realize that I drop one of the main characters about half way through the book. He's just... gone.

Now the book is the first volume of a trilogy and he has lots more stuff to do in the later books but it just left the book feeling unbalanced. So I took a longer chapter that needed some splitting, cut it in half and tacked 2500 words about him to the end of the first half.

This solves the problem of having not enough about this crucial character and, simultaneously, provides me with an even 20 chapters. I like that number.

It also brings the novel up to 96000 words which is edging on the upper limit of what I wanted but that's alright too long is better than too short at this point.

I have had a request to post a short story up here. I may do so sometime in the next few weeks but it will take some time. Although I do have some short story ideas I want to flesh out the novel has to take priority and, at this point, it needs more work.

Turning to Wikipedia, I've been very active in a discussion on the notability of this random pseudo-scientist from South Africa. This guy touts this nonsense about how all the pyramids in the world are starmaps and, well, the whole ancient astronauts thing. Anyway I seem to have angered his fan club and they are now accusing me of having a vendetta against him.

A little hint to the "pyramid power!!!" people: I don't even remember this guy's name when I am not looking at it on my watchlist. That is how unimportant he is to me. I don't know him, don't care about him, and don't have anything against him. He could very well be a very sociable fellow in real life. But his books should be shelved in Sci-Fi / Fantasy. And apparently a very small number of people think his hair-brained theories are actually real! And that is just silly.

L. Ron Hubbard silly.

Just made plans for Labour Day. Huo Guo and Mahjong with some good friends of mine. It's going to be sweet.