On complications....

Wherein novel plotting gets byzantine. I have Wray and Bryce just trying to live their lives in Prince George, only to be thrust into the reality that the various families of magicians either a) don't believe that or b) have no desire for a creature such as Wray in the city, and factions within them with plans of their own, along with a cult in the background that want Bryce removed from the city so that it can remain hidden.

Essentially, there are the two MCs, a ghost friend of Wray's, the gremlin, and one police officer on the same rough 'side'. Then there is a cult on another side, and ~8 magicians, each with differing goals and from various families of magicians who also have plans of their own. Trying to keep track of all of this is liable to make my head hurt, but in a good way. The fun part will be somehow meshing it all together since the story is being told from Wray's pov (though, since it is a letter to someone, he can and does jump out of the narrative proper at times).

The story is at least living up to my expectations of it being the political novel of the Ghoulish series, such as it is, and oddly hasn't been plotted out definitively so far. My plot notes are mostly written concurrently with the story but I will have to forge ahead of that soon to lay proper groundwork for other things. Much of the weekend was taken up with considering plots and writing out notes and doing research, which is all well and good but leaves the word count at 13K.

Fun plotting stuff: a lot of things that will show up in the third novel and the whys and wherefores of them. The limits of Bryce's knowledge get explored as well as the limits of what the magicians known themselves: their focus is on magic and the monsters it creates. Whatever else may be in the world isn't something they much concern themselves with.

Hard plotting stuff: setting a novel in a real city is hard. Especially one with a dearth of available materials. Much of my non-online reading had been one guide to wilderness treks from the city, a social geography of it that is a decade old and a history of Prince George written in 1946. OTOH, the third novel will be set in Toronto (I think) which should prove far easier for research purposes.