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@noah-cochran

My apologies for the belated response, life has been busy, but in a good way. My family and I are on our way back from Georgia state, and all of its great weather, people, and tall pines.

Don’t worry about it! I’m glad to hear from you!

Ohh, that sounds like so much fun! *One google search later* That’s a really long road trip! That’s from here to Italy! It sounds like you all had a good time!

Writing has been going well. I was able to keep the manuscript a little under 200k, and I started preparing for my first round of revision a little over a week ago, and I hope to begin by this weekend.

You finished? A l r e a d y?? Wow, count me impressed!!! I can’t wait to read it!

Are you still waiting for beta-readers on TTD? When are you planning to revise it?

School is school and college is college, but I’m enjoying them–though trips and social excursions always suck my enthusiasm and make me want to only talk with people and enjoy the company of friends. Downsides to the gregarious nature I suppose. xD Keep pushing forward in that world of physics. You’ll get through it eventually–probably in one piece.

LOL, I’m the opposite, too many social interactions and I start considering the perks of Rapunzel’s tower XD Though there’s always that anticlimactic feeling after any kind of visit, that sucks 🙁

Pff, I sure hope so but currently physics has the upper hand XD

Wow. Y’all’s house is 100 years old?

116 years old iirc! It was built in 1906 but it’s been restored considerably, almost the entire interior, insulation, roof, windows, etc. Some things are still original though, such as the bents and beams. The exterior still looks pretty much original though!

Amen. I was done with winter after the first week.

Absolutely. We’re just starting to see some hints of spring. (Like the sun! It has reappeared! It’s a miracle!)

Let’s hear it.

Here we go then XD

Several important facts for the retelling of this story. My horses are very given to *ahem* unchaperoned excursions. They have jumped through electric wire fences in the past.

Horses get jumpy with wind, and it was still very windy that day.

We have a huge empty plot of land behind the pastures. It belongs to a farmer and there are usually crops, but it’s currently empty which means it’s a massive stretch of deep mud puddles.

There’s a long path from that field to the busy road in front of our house.

I think you can see where this is going.

We were taking out the horses, Lightning broke through the electric fence and went for a run, through the orchard, like the instigator of chaos she is. Djadon followed her because he is easily excited and has the moral compass of a raccoon, which is to say less than none.

I was not yet upset by this point because as I mentioned, this has happened before. I fetched feed and tried to bribe them into obeying and even caught Djadon at one point because greed supercedes liberty in his case.

However, Lightning was entirely unconvinced and took off in the opposite direction, straight toward the empty field of mud. When I say took off, I mean she was running like a rotund racehorse. Djadon broke loose and followed with mindless enthousiasm, adding several bucks to the already disasterous occasion.

I followed them, which involved wading through ankle-deep mud. An additional unfortunate factor is that I was wearing an ankle-length skirt, which got in the way most spectacularly. Running after two criminal ponies in a muddy field was not an option, especially since they were far ahead of me.

There was some more bucking and running back and forth, complete with flying mud and splashing through puddles. This situation would have been funny if it had happened to anyone else. I was mainly concerned for the fact that both horses share one defective brain cell and the chance that one of them would run straight into a ditch without a single thought was abnormally probable.

Eventually, the malicious instigator more commonly referred to as Lightning decided that an empty field was less interesting than the road, so she sprinted all the way across the field straight down the path, with the moralless criminal right behind her. While I was still mired in an ankle-deep puddle.

At this point I may or may not have thought several unrepeatable words.

Thankfully, there was a field of grass right before the road and they diverted toward that, where my father came to the rescue and helped lead the malicious creatures back to their field.

I was less than thrilled with the whole situation though looking back on it, it’s quite hilarious XD

Ouch, I feel ya, but good for you for putting worship first.

It’s a pain, but it wasn’t a hard choice XD

Yeah, it can be tough to keep it up everyday, but it sounds like it’s been fun to write, so keep it up. That snake scene has piqued my interest.   Who threw it at who?

It was Liorah’s fault XD (Who else?) Long story short, someone put a snake in with her writing utensils as a stupid prank. (The snake wasn’t poisonous so it wasn’t an assassination attempt.)

Now, Liorah has no self-restraint, anger management issues, and was also under a ridiculous amount of stress, so she did not take it well when she pulled out a snake instead of a pen.

She screamed and had a pretty strong reaction to it. Several people were watching and laughed.

She did not take it well. She snapped the snake’s neck on the edge of the table and hurled it at them, then viciously ignored them.

It originally started out as a “LOL, Liorah’s being stupid and impulsive” scene, but when I actually wrote it it was surprisingly sad. She’s trying so hard and pushing herself beyond her breaking point to make that mission successful and nobody seems to notice or care.

I’m very proud of it 😀

I read your mystery post as well, and first off, anything inspired by Christie already has me pumped. Due to my exorbitant love of mystery detective whodunit, I thought I would write mystery too, but the medieval side of me won out. If I can think of any advice on plotting or pacing a mystery I’ll let you know, but I’m surprisingly bad at solving, let alone conceiving mysteries, despite the amount of Sherlock and Hercule Poirot that I’ve read.

LOL, I’m just as bad at it XD I have never guessed a mystery correctly, I just sit back and watch the chaos unfold, so I have no idea how good it will actually be when I try to write it XD

Thanks for the encouragement, I really appreciate it!

Firstly, are than any traditions, customs, styles, etc.. that I could add to my Jewish character other than tzitizt for worldbuilding flavor? Things that could be mentioned or very quickly described?

Okay, there are lots. Here are the first few things I could think of.

Mezuzahs, as far as I could find they were used in the middle ages. It has function similar to tzitzit, as a reminder. (And again, it’s a commandment so it was kept.) Also, it can function for plot purposes if your character needs to find other Jews for any reason.

I actually learned something interesting while looking it up, namely, Ashkenazi mezuzahs are placed diagonally while Sephardic are vertical. I never actually knew there was a difference, all those I’ve seen are diagonal XD

Otherwise, prayer times, I don’t know whether minyans were a thing back then, you can research that too, but I think your character would probably adhere to the prayer times still.

Your character will probably have some good memories of festivals when he was younger. They’re always a great time, it’s pretty much the same attitude as toward Christmas for Christians.

The biggest festivals are Sukkot and Pesach. I could expand on this a lot but I remember really looking forward to seeing my friends. Both of those festivals are often group activities, with several families coming together.

This will often result in a large group of children of various ages which always brings a certain degree of chaos, especially when paired with a generally festive mood, staying up past bedtime, and far too much sugar XD It’s great, there are always at least a few pranks, several “slight” injuries and a good time is had by all.

Some other things that always stand out are the search for the Afikomen at the Seder meal and building and decorating the Sukkah at Sukkot.

The afikomen is one of the matzahs during the Seder (The Seder is a l o t of explanations so I won’t get into that) and it’s hidden by the leader about halfway into the Haggadah, and right before the meal all the children compete to see who finds it first.

Finding the Afikomen is mostly rewarded by bragging rights for the entire year, so the stakes are exceptionally high, especially if you have multiple siblings.

As far as I could find, it was probably used in the Middle ages since it was briefly mentioned in the Talmud. The original purpose has always been to give the children something to look forward to so they don’t fall asleep XD

The sukkah is fun since it means you get to go looking for leafy branches to put on top of it and then you get to make decorations. I found a text that indicates that Medieval sukkah’s were also decorated: Link here

Also, kosher was and is definitely a thing. Your character probably wouldn’t accept any kind of meat if he wasn’t sure where it came from and how it was made. It isn’t just it not being pork, things like touching pork or being cooked next to pork are kind of a gray territory and he’ll probably avoid it just to be sure.

I often just tell people I don’t eat meat when I don’t feel like explaining everything. It’s often awkward and hard to check, since it can make people embarrassed or put them on the defensive, but it’s mostly a matter of just trying your best.

This is a lot of information, but don’t worry about it too much! (I might have gone slightly overboard XD) When I beta-read it I’ll go through and add comments whenever you could add something, so it’s not too much of an issue.

She is a side character in book 1 and a more major character in book 2, but I had it planned so that her midpoint was in book 3. Is that possible or am I dragging it out too long?

It’s really hard to say without reading it. My first thought is that it’s borderline a redemption arc, she’d probably be functioning as an antagonist for the first book. It could work, but I can’t really tell without reading it. I’ll pay attention to it when I read it!