Another productive round of brainstorming with has let me flesh out several aspects of the main characters of Mirror’s Gate, although the proper names of most of them have not yet clicked into place. But I know quite a bit more about my hero and heroine now, and at least about their oldest child and what part she will play in the story.

I’ve also decided that this story takes place in the same world as Lament of the Dove, only in an entirely different country, clear over on the other side of the continent. I’m still toying with what I know about the country in question but I’m halfway suspecting that it’s called Vreyland, that it’s farther north than Adalonia and has proportionally colder weather, and that the people there tend to be of hearty and fair stock. I do definitely also know that they are magic-friendly and elf-friendly, and in fact, there is interbreeding with the elves in the national background, which is how magic got into their general gene pool.

And as of tonight, I just coredumped about three chapters’ worth of initial outline, covering the rough beginning of the story–as well as a later, almost complete scene that resulted from the brainstorm.

Man. If I can get a few more character names into place I think I’ll be able to start writing this thing. Bitchin’.