November 2025 News

I’ve been toying with the idea of changing the nature of these updates. Pinpointing the goals of it and sharpening focus. As I see it, these accomplish the following:

-Inform interested parties in what’s going on with certain endeavors of mine, particularly writing.

-Document for future me what I was up to in, say, November of 2025.

The future only knows what changes will ensue. For today, we’re riding it out.

Writing

In October draft 3 of V&V2 went from 68,853 words to 149,840. A lot of it was newly written, but the majority was vetted, approved, and carried over from draft 2. This suggests to me the final wordcount may be less than 200k.

What’s left for draft 3?

A handful of tricky scenes which include:

2. Monks??

4. Interrogation

17. A Concentrated Effort (to kill the heathen king)

30. Redemier Prepares

32. The Cursed Island

34. Storms seen by New Vim

45. Winning (shouldn’t feel like this)

52. The Actual Final Chase (for real this time)

These aren’t their real names. I’ll name them last, because that’s one of the most fun parts and I’ll need a little dessert to look forward to after this steak of suffering.

What’s after draft 3?

Improvements. There are about 60,000 words in the notes document that need to be considered and either applied, trashed, or thrown in the archive. After that come test readers. Then editing. Then publishing, hopefully to occur in 2026.

Also, I’ve recently spoken with Felix Ortiz about the cover for V&V2 and things are in the works. Color me excited, nervous, and officially f*cking broke.

Piano Tuning

I started tuning pianos. First as a curiosity and a challenge, then I realized I enjoy it and have a knack for it. So I started charging money. If it keeps up, I reckon I’ll have to make something more official of it.

Music

Something Once Sacred (in which I’m the bassist) has one more show coming up this year and it’s at the brewing company in Hartwell. Follow our FB page for details on that.

Elsewhere but related: I bought a new bass and am waiting for it to arrive. There’s more to this story but it’s not over yet so I’ll spare you.

Podcast - Four Beardsmen of the Bookpocalypse

We had some bangers last month, including a D&D session with the one and only Anna Smith Spark (author), a lively interview with Adrian Gibson (author, interviewer, tattoo artist), and another D&D session with Thomas J Devens (author).

We have three more this year and you can catch them on our YT channel - @FourBeardsmen

Next Year

I hope to publish V&V2.

see you then

dtl