Total Wordcount: 41144
(includes the part written before SocNoc - 4143 words)
Percentage: 74%
I'm into the home streak now - for the wordcount at least. Characters have not even got as far as goal #1 yet - reaching the Tsingy. This book it appears is going to be an epic - as planned. I'm spending a fair amount of time researching things, and possibly engaging in too much "species dropping" in which I am trying to include as many different lemur species as I can. The problem is that the Malagasy names for many of the species are the same - so Vakira, the red-fronted brown lemur is also the name used for the crowned lemur and several other lemur species. Which means I'm spending a fair amount of time describing lemurs.
Anyway, Karazana and Aurelia are on their way to Belo-sur-Tsribihina.
So maybe it's time to introduce you to some of the characters, starting with Aurelia:
Aurelia is a silky sifaka - well, to be precise, she is half-silky sifaka and half some other species, possibly diademned. Her fur is plush and white, with highlights of gold around her head and arms - hence the name "Aurelia" which is a french name meaning "golden". Aurelia's other distinguishing feature is her bright blue eyes. These mark her as being of the royal blood line and are certainly going to cause some difficulties at many intervals in the book.
Aurelia's mother is a silky named Solange. She died tragically after birthing her kit. Aurelia was raised by Karazana, a ring-tailed lemur (maki). She is precocious and independent, even at such a young age (about 5 months at present). She is also forthright and a bit impulsive. And a lot smarter than you might expect.
When I originally began to write this novel, Aurelia was supposed to play a minor role, despite being the main pivot point of the plot. She was supposed to be the clingy kit that spent the first third of the book as little more than a prop and moved into her own about halfway through when she got to the city of Narivo. It is my hope that eventually the plot will take her there! However, she's a stubborn wee lass and she ran away in the fourth or so chapter, befriended both a monkey and a sifaka and allowing her blue eyes to be seen by the wrong people.
(The reason this pictures look quite different from my usual is because I created it for a "favourite artist" swap - which means they are my take on another artist's styles - this one is Mark Ryden IIRC. For these swaps a lot of participants just copy the works of the selected "favourite artist" but I prefer to parody their works with my own characters - usually lemurs.)
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