Due to a tragic bit of arithmetical incompetence (which I could try and blame on this cold, but mostly it's just because I've been going soft and can't handle recurring decimals any more) when I thought I was breaking even, plus a couple of days staring at a broken chapter, knowing what must come after but not knowing how to get there, I'm actually now about 5 percentiles (a day and a half) behind schedule.

In theory it's not the end of the world, because I'm on holiday next week with nothing more to do than catch up, and build a lead to sit on down the back straight the week after. That's the theory anyway; in practice if it looks like I have too big a gap I often start doing something else, and many of those things expand like evil time-stealing gasses to fill all available time.

Anyway, I'm sorry about the slow posting; I will have a chapter for you tomorrow (Tuesday) even if it's a short one, then hopefully I can build some momentum again in order to get the real plot rolling.

Status: (by my count, including draft material, which may get shorter before it gets longer) ~17,350 words, ~34.7%. Today was meant to be 40%, so a comeback is definitely what I need now.