There’s an old (yes, very old) observation that states results are like a duck tootling about on a pond; it all may look very simple, smooth, and restrained above water, but underneath there’s a huge amount of complex, frenetic activity. So the last month for me.

On the ‘above the water’ front I’ve managed to add a reasonable 7,500 words to Draft One, giving me a decent start into Volume Four of Descent, Deceit. I’m still tracking for around 255,000 words across Diaspora and Deceit, so all looks good.

So there’s obviously no writing speed records being set (or aimed for) but underneath it all there’s been a heck of a lot of research going on. To give you a little idea about what’s on the way in Descent: Deceit, I’ve been burning the midnight oil researching aeroshell braking, Innuit meat preservation, mass psychology of starvation, multiple re-reads of Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago (the single-volume abridged version, although the three-volume work still calls to me form the shelves), glaciation and volcanic systems, LOFTID reentry profiles, micro-nutrient deficiencies … well, you get the point I’m sure.

None of which raise their heads in an obvious way in Deceit. It’s like most authors know or come to know, all it does is ensures that the ten to twenty lines in any novel that relate directly to the research subject ring true. And (hopefully) that I don’t make a total arse of myself.