Ch. 103-115 are written, at 66,650 words. Many of those chapters are in at least second-draft state. Ch. 116-120 remain to be written, but these will hopefully be shorter and faster—we are past what I thought of as the main hump of writing. The next three months will be on a tight schedule at MIRI, though, and I’m not currently holding out much hope for beginning to post before the end of 2014. I do hold out a lot of hope for starting to post the final arc pretty soon after that. Ch. 103 is a brief one-shot and I will post it to announce the schedule for the final arc when I have one.

I have signed up for Kindle Unlimited on Amazon, a service in which you pay a $9.99 monthly flat rate and get unlimited access to all the Kindle Unlimited books (which includes all Kindle Select books). As always, it’s hard to find books I want to read within the vast puddle of books, but at least with Kindle Unlimited there’s no marginal added penalty each time I try. Two Kindle Unlimited books that I’ve enjoyed so far were Nice Dragons Finish Last by Rachel Aaron, and The Shadow of What Was Lost by James Islington.

(I think Kindle Unlimited is the direction where I want book sales to go—I really don’t like marginal payments, for some reason. Reading on Kindle Unlimited feels a lot like trying out fanfictions. But for the system to work in the longer run, it needs a better way of showing me books I have a decent probability of enjoying. Then again, browsing for fanfiction on the Internet has a pretty sad recommendation system too.)

My significant other, Brienne, is visiting Cordoba, Argentina for four months with intent to work on a book of meditation-style exercises for cognitive self-training. Drop me a line at [email protected] if you might be interested in helping her set up when she arrives, or helping her find a new place to stay after the first couple of weeks. (She was also considering Uruguay, but just could not find any sunlit, out-of-the-way places to stay that weren’t too expensive—everything in Uruguay that’s online seems to be at tourist prices. Chile remains a possibility if anyone wants to advocate for it strongly, but you don’t have much time before she buys the ticket.)

Raymond Arnold has just announced the crowdfunding campaign for the Secular Solstice 2014.

MealSquares has now opened the beta (with free shipping) of their nutritionally-complete meal-replacement muffins. Think of it as Soylent in solid form. Be warned that MealSquares are currently very dense (presumably for shipping reasons), but as with Soylent, some people report very good experiences already.

The next Progress Report will be on Nov 1st, 2014 at 5pm Pacific Time.