Work on Fire Star: A Novel of the Celestial Empire (or the alternate history novel previously known as Celestial Empire: Fire Star) proceeds apace. This week I averaged just a bit shy of nine thousand words written a day (which is a bit misleading, since one day I did just a bit over 6K, and another day I did north of 11K, so it's hardly consistent), turning 28K worth of outline into 43K worth of finished prose. I've got about one and a third chapters left to write, which should probably take me another two or three days, at this rate, and then I'm going to spend a day or two doing absolutely nothing, before starting in on the short stories I've promised to different folks. Who knows, I might actually take the time to read a book for pleasure!