Sorry for the delay in posting a new chapter. I actually had to *gasp* WORK all day, chasing a field that was not getting set, which turns out to be a huge enormous problem in the current system because it probably causes other problems no one has noticed yet, and I was making out the failure ticket at 5 p.m., being the last one out the door.
So... I'm in the chat room, and i'm sipping cold mineralwater, and I have 400 grammes of my favorite cheese to sustain me (as well as white seedless grapes) and you guys really don't need to know what I eat while I make up a murder plot.
My friend and erstwhile editor Judy has made up a timeline of discrepancies in the Saga which will be corrected upon 2nd draft. The first is references to Ellery being 20 when his father died. When I started the third book I revised the timeline of his meeting Beagle and so that all got mashed up, but he was supposed to have lost his father before he entered college, which would have been age 17 (in 1963). The second major discrepancy, of course, is Ennis's (and Junior's) ages and the event of Jack's death. In the short story, Jack was killed sometime after May 1983, and I had always remembered this date as May 1982 and of course put him in Austin in August of 1982, Ennis being the wrong age when he gets to Laramie. Suffice it to say that my story has everything revised to this 1982 event, and should be straightened out, putting Ennis at age 41 (his 41st birthday having passed during the action of the second book) and Junior at age 20 (coming up on 21 in September), when Ellery will turn 38. Whew!
Not terrible or plot-distorting discrepancies, but unfortunately, I have linked some major action in "A Second Chance" to the development of AIDS and AIDS testing and cures, and we're going to have to stick with it being 1984 at this point!