Deadline: 4 days

Write one-page, single-spaced, first-person profiles for four protagonists and four antagonists in four days.

Yep. That’s two profiles a day, starting tonight. I’ll begin with the hero, and his main adversary, King Philip Augustus. (No, I’m not afraid to step on some historical toes. Why do you ask?)

Deadline: 1 week

1 World Map
1 City Map
3 Major Culture Descriptions (with religion, language and history notes - three single-spaced pages per culture)
Flora and fauna list of 25 interrelated species with descriptions

I now know more about the ecology of the Wachau valley than I ever thought I’d need to.

I’m putting Goal #1 on hold for awhile. I was working on the description for 12th century Northern French and stopped dead when I got to religion. I suddenly realized that it’s simply impossible to write a novel set during the medieval period with any pretensions to accuracy without knowing a thing about medieval catholicism; it informed almost every aspect of people’s lives. Although most historical works on religion deal more with the clergy and canonical law, I snapped up a copy of Religion in the Medieval West since it looks like it deals more with the relationship between religion and the laity. I think once I’ve taken that in, I’ll be ready to write up the description of 12th century French culture.

I’m also planning to get a library card from the local junior college as well, so I can take advantage of inter-library loan; it’s something I’d never really considered, but apparently for those hard-to-find journal articles it can’t be beat.

Meanwhile, on to Goal #2: Character profiles.