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So we're back from our spring vacation, which was riding along with friends as they visited Tennessee.

To explain a bit: we've gotten in the habit of traveling with our friends Jim and Susan on our less-elaborate trips that don't have any special purpose beyond getting out of town for awhile. The mechanics vary, but in this case they made pretty much all the arrangements because they have a big ol' car they bought specifically for road trips (I'm not sure whether it's officially a truck, SUV, or station wagon, but it seats six adults comfortably and still has room for a cooler and some luggage) and an AirBnB account. Julie and Susan did most of the planning; Susan did most of the driving.

So last Saturday we got picked up disgustingly early and drove to Knoxville, where some of our former neighbors now live. (Jim and Susan, Sam and Sandy, and Julie and I, all lived in the same part of Gaithersburg, and our kids grew up together to some extent; Jim and Sam were leaders in Julian's Boy Scout troop. None of us live in Gaithersburg anymore.) We stayed with Sam and Sandy for two nights, driving around the Great Smoky Mountains in between. Visited Gatlinburg and Cherokee NC, saw the damage from the recent forest fire, visited the world's largest knife store.

Monday we moved on from Knoxville to Nashville, our final destination, where Sandy had booked a house overlooking the river a little northeast of the city, in Madison, TN. I'm not sure whether Madison is part of Nashville or a suburb, actually. Anyway, it was a great rental, with two comfy bedrooms (and a third we didn't use because it didn't look as comfy), a deck and balcony overlooking the Cumberland River, and lots of other amenities, including a cat named Bolt. Jim and Susan had never had a cat, so they weren't sure how to deal with him, but he was a pretty friendly and cooperative animal.

We didn't know until after we got there, but the house is apparently owned by a moderately successful singer/songwriter who rents it out when she's not in Nashville -- which is often, since she tours a lot. The day we arrived she was leaving for a festival in Mexico.

So we spent a few days in and around Nashville, seeing the sights and hearing the sounds. Toured the Ryman Auditorium and the Hermitage and the Country Music Hall of Fame, saw Studio B where all RCA's Nashville artists of the '50s and '60s recorded (e.g., Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, etc.), went honky-tonking on Lower Broadway, took a boat ride on the General Jackson, saw the Grand Ole Opry, visited the Johnny Cash Museum, etc.

The one thing we'd meant to do that we missed, due to sloppy scheduling, was eating at the Bluebird Cafe. Oh, well.

The weather in Knoxville was horrible, with rain that sometimes worked up to torrential; the weather in Nashville was mostly great, but that rain meant the Cumberland River was running very high -- by the time we left, it was twelve feet above flood stage. The downtown riverside promenade was under a foot or two of water. Fortunately, the area is accustomed to this -- no damage is going to occur until you get maybe 20 feet above flood stage. (In 2010 a flood crested at 42 feet. That was bad. Lots of places have stuff about how they rebuilt.) It did mean the General Jackson couldn't do their regular route because the water was too high to fit safely under some bridges, so we didn't see downtown from the water.

Our rented deck gave us a good view of the river, as I mentioned, and looking at the trees on the far bank we saw that the river rose a lot just while we were there.

And Saturday we left early and came home, where I'm trying to catch up on everything, and here we are.

I have just launched the campaign to finance the publication of Tom Derringer and the Aluminum Airship!

Look! Up in the sky!

It's a bird! It's a plane! It's Chapter Twenty-One!

Yes, Chapter Twenty-One -- strange visitor from another reality, gifted with powers and abilities beyond those of ordinary prose that it uses to wage a never-ending battle for truth, justice, and the Ethsharitic way!

It did get completely paid for, but there's only about a buck and a half over toward Chapter Twenty-Two.

Three chapters to go, but only if they're paid for before I sign the contract. Which I don't have yet, because I wanted to finish the second draft first, and I've only just started on it.

Chapter Eighteen of Relics of War, a.k.a. Ishta's Companion, has now been posted. I'm actually still $1.04 short, but there's no point in being obsessive about it.

I've also posted an announcement concerning the serial.

The first draft is completely written; it runs twenty-four chapters and a brief epilogue, totaling 73,115 words. I haven't started the second draft yet; been busy with non-writing stuff.

Can't think of anything else that needs mentioning. Thanks to everyone who's donated!

I am pleased to report that Chapter Sixteen has finally been posted -- we hit the magic number at 10:15 last night. I hadn't been expecting it, so I didn't have the files ready to go, but they're up now.

(I had somehow recorded three donations in the wrong category in my records, which I caught last night when I realized the totals didn't match my memory, but it wouldn't have much affected when the chapter went up -- those three would not have put it over the top without yesterday's contributions. But if I'd had them right I might have realized how close it was and had the files ready.)

Chapter Eighteen isn't finished yet; we were on vacation last week, so I only got a single page written, and before that the holidays and illness were delaying things. I'm hoping that now all that stuff is out of the way I'll be more productive.

Meanwhile, Tor has been reissuing my books in trade paperback. The new edition of A Young Man Without Magic has been available for a month, and I've received my author copies of the new edition of Dragon Weather, which should be out next week.

Hope all of you who were in the area affected by last week's "polar vortex" are okay; we missed it. By pure luck, our Caribbean vacation took us away from all that record cold.

(For those of you overseas, or who live in the unaffected portions of the U.S. and somehow weren't paying attention, last week brought most of the U.S. and Canada several days of arctic conditions, with record low temperatures.)

Anyway. It's a new year, and it's started well for me; I hope it's as good for all of you.

Chapter Fourteen is finally posted. Money did continue to trickle in, and finally reached the necessary total. There's even already a small start on Chapter Fifteen, though it still has a goodly way to go.

Maybe everyone was busy with Hallowe'en before.

Anyway, there it is, and Chapter Fifteen is mostly written, with still probably a couple of pages to go. Chapter Fifteen will complete what I've been thinking of as the first part of the story -- or really, maybe the second, if you want to consider the trip to Varag as Part One, and from there to where we are now as Part Two.

In any case, there's one more chunk to the story, and I have no idea how long it will be; we'll have to see how it develops. It takes up a page and a half of the original seven-page outline, but that page and a half is a bit sketchy. It might be just a couple of chapters, or develop into half the story.

I'm not going to try to maintain a weekly schedule anymore; I'll post new chapters as fast as they're written and paid for. (Both are required.) We'll see how it goes.

Chapter Twelve is posted. It was actually paid for a couple of days early, unlike the previous two chapters.

Chapter Thirteen is nowhere near paid for, but it has a small start. And Chapter Thirteen is nowhere near written, but it has a small start -- I only finished writing Chapter Twelve on Tuesday afternoon, as I'd spent the weekend at Capclave and have been horrendously busy dealing with Vika's Avenger, which is done, but I still need to send out a couple of hundred rewards. The first batch of finished books is sitting in a box, waiting to go to the post office.

I talked to John Betancourt, publisher of Wildside Press, at Capclave, and we settled on Relics of War as the eventual title, replacing Ishta's Companion. I'm not going to change anything in mid-serial, though.

Let's see, was there anything else? Nothing comes to mind. Hope you guys like the new chapter.

Chapter Nine is now posted. That's the good news.

The bad news is that I still haven't finished writing Chapter Ten, and it's less than half paid for. Looks like this one may be running out of steam.

More bad news: I'm going to be traveling next week. I hope to post Chapter Ten anyway, if it's done and paid for, and I'll have a computer with me with all the necessary software for that, but I will not have my e-mail lists, and will probably not have access to this blog, so there won't be the usual wave of announcements.

Also: I've been mulling over possible titles, because Ishta's Companion is just not a grabber. My current favorite is A Relic of the War. Comments are welcome.

I have unleashed Chapter Seven!

Chapter Eight is also paid for and written, and will therefore presumably appear next week.

Chapter Nine is written but not yet paid for.

Chapter Ten is partially written. It's lurking on my hard drive, and I should go beat it into submission.

I'm pleased to report that Chapter Five is now online.

Chapter Six is paid for; Chapter Seven still isn't. And I still haven't finished Chapter Nine, but I've got three other time-consuming projects squared away (at least for the moment) so I'm optimistic about getting back to it soon.

And this chapter reveals a few things that some of you had already guessed.