(sigh) After dealing with an incredible amount of local crap (which I'm not going to bore you with at the moment, but will, a little later, on the weblog and elsewhere), this is just to let everyone know that Chapter 5 is now available for "The Big Meow"'s subscribers. And my apologies for the long delay. (The chapter will go up for public consumption a week for today.)

Profound apologies also to those who emailed me about the long delay in chapter posting, and didn't get a response: the mail is just one more thing that's been very screwed up lately. I am working to fix that, as well as many other things. More of this shortly. (Briefly, I want to finish the book up before the end of December, and am about to set up a new pub schedule. We'll also be revamping the website so as to make it simpler to do updates and stay in touch with everybody in a timely manner. When everything's set up, I'll see if this weblog can be imported / incorporated directly into the website structure.)

Subscribers are being mailed information about the file locations right now. (Briefly: it's where chapters 3 and 4 were on their limited release, and the same usernames / passwords will work for accessing the new material. If you're a subscriber and you've lost the location information or the passwords, mail me at diane.duane@gmail.com and I'll mail you the passwords straight back. Please put the word PICARESQUE in your subject line so I can make sure Gmail notices your messages properly.)

Once again, all possible apologies for the great lateness...but I'm now on track to getting this thing done pronto. Thanks again to all of you who've been bearing with me so patiently.