Okay, this is not going to plan.
As I plot away on Book Two, it is becoming clear how much trouble I have created for myself in ending Book One as I did. It is taking so long to rationalise and normalise the consequences of that ending, that it is threatening to destabilise Book Two. I am finding I need to consume so much time in explaining things away that Book Two is in danger of losing its focus from Luke and Stef and Leri. That ending is beginning to cost me the tone and believability Book One has already established.
Dilemma.
Resolving this is also not helped by real world issues which will consume much of this month.
For now this leaves Book Two bubbling away in my subconscious for the most part, along with the mad idea of revising the ending of Book One so that Aurilla is displaced elsewhere, possibly entirely.
After all, how much should fidelity to a year old idea concerning The Thing be allowed to derail the emergent joy of Wilhelm, namely the Luke/Stef/Leri triangle?
Increasingly less so, it seems to me.
We'll see...CH