Small course correction, with respect to Architect of Worlds.

A few minutes ago, I sent this month’s incremental update of the book design to my patrons. That’s a few days early and about 12 pages short of the goal I set for myself at the beginning of April.

The reason is that I just reached Step Twenty-Four in the main design sequence. That’s the step in which you determine the current geophysical parameters for a world under development – status of the world’s lithosphere, whether or not it has active plate tectonics, that sort of thing. The issue is that there are a couple really thorny bits of math in that step, probably the ugliest formulae anywhere in the previous draft. I’m also not entirely confident in the accuracy of the mini-model for that step. So I’d like to pause the layout long enough to do a bit of research, maybe develop a new mini-model, and simplify the procedure so it’s not as ugly and ill-polished.

While I’m at it, I also have similar concerns about some of the later steps, especially where we figure out how much greenhouse effect a world gets from its atmosphere based on its composition. I’m actually very happy with the way that procedure fits together overall – it models the evolution of an Earthlike world’s atmosphere very elegantly. However, the actual mini-model for greenhouse effect is again both ugly and not one I’m 100% confident in. So that might get some attention too.

So I’m going to set aside layout work on Architect for at least a few days, while I go off and do some of that redevelopment. In the meantime, I’m just one chapter away from the point in Twice-Crowned at which I was thinking another charged release of the interim draft for my patrons might be appropriate. So the last few days of April, I’m going to spend mostly on getting that chapter written and polishing up the last chunk of new material. Patrons should look for a charged release there, probably sometime on Sunday if all goes according to plan.

I also have another “bonus” book review I want to publish this month, but that will have to wait until I’m sure I can get this chunk of Twice-Crowned whipped into shape on time. if that doesn’t work out, at least I have a review ready to go early in May.