The good news is, I don’t think I’ll have to completely replace every Dead Rick scene from Part One.

Just a bit more than half of them.

Seriously, I feel like a book or two ago, somebody sneaked in and replaced my writing process with another author’s. I used to write relatively clean first drafts; now I flounder through writing wrong scenes left and right, inventing Spanish nymphs that may not even show up in the final draft, and generally failing to figure out what one of the villains is doing. Some concerted effort on my part has at least begun to sort that last bit out, which is why my pessimistic guess of “all Dead Rick scenes” has been revised downward to “five of the nine, with revision on the rest,” but it’s still disheartening. (Oh yeah, and I’ll probably need to write at least one entirely new scene, aside from replacing half of those already there.)

I’m glad I noticed the growing pattern from Ashes and Star, and gave myself extra time for this book. Otherwise I’d be screeeeeeeeewed.

I’m also very glad that I figured out most of Eliza’s PII while in London, as it gives me something to do while I figure out where I went wrong on the Dead Rick end. If I can manage to do his scene replacements while moving forward on her part, I’ll be in good shape. But first I need to finish sorting out him and Nadrett — and figure out if La Madura’s staying in the book or not — so I know what to replace those scenes with.