Holy hell this is amazing.
Congratulations! I’m salivating at the chance to beta test Tea and Scones and explore all the nook and crannies in the game…
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Chapter Six finally debugged (after a particularly nasty failure to pass Randomtest for no good reason has been solved!) I just played through it and it’s looking to be in pretty good shape! Now Chapter Six is off to my patient editor.
Ordinarily, I would now start outlining Chapter Seven, but I have another writing task that I have to do for a bit–I’m revising a scholarly article on an Edmund Spenser poem, and I need to sneak in some Renaissance work for a week or two for a different patient editor while Chapter Six is being edited! So I have to quickly change hats to get into professorial mode and then I will quickly change back to humour mode once that article is off to the press!
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That’s amazing, and I hope the article and Renaissance work go brilliantly! Best of luck with all the millinery-shifting!
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Which one?! I mean, uh… who cares about that stuff, can’t for more Tea and Scones. 
Good luck and all the best! Oh wait, humor mode is not switched off, it simply fades into the background instead!
Minor update: I’ve finished the article I was working on, and it’s out the door; chapter six is being edited as we speak, and I started working on the code skeleton for chapter seven. We’re back!
Before long I’ll have a vignette outline up in the first post and begin the running word count again after I finish the coding skeleton and start to get into the serious writing. It’s been a good mental rest to write something else, but now I’m excited to get back into Tea and Scones and tackle this next-to-last chapter.
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Now that I’ve got the code skeleton done and am back to writing in earnest, I’ve put the list of vignettes up in the first post, under a spoiler. There are a few plot elements and very minor spoilery things there, so don’t look if you are spoiler-averse!
As always, I will update the first post every single time I write–updating the word count and the thing I am working on. I’ll have a better sense of how long this will take me to write once I get into it–before I really get going in the chapter, I have to write a bit of a lengthy adventure for people who are on the Firesnuff path and who have a rival–it works better structurally here at the start of chapter seven, whereas all the other rival adventures are in chapter six.
That’s what I’ll dive into once I finish the Interlude intro to the chapter.
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I’ve just finished the big chunk of ch. 7 at the start that you only get if you have Firesnuff as your sponsor and have earned a serious enemy based on a failure path in ch. 1. So, 50k words into ch.7, and I’m just starting the bit that most players will start the chapter with! But I’m really pleased with how that branch went, because it will give a lot of meaning and fun for failing a particular thing in ch.1.
So now, after some reporting back to your friends about what you did in ch.6, (what I’ll write this coming week) I’m going to dive into the five big routes of ch.7 which will make up the bulk of the chapter, starting with Tabby’s route–the midnight raid on the factory, which should appeal to spyhunters, revolutionaries, those with an eye for business, and people who find themselves stumbling into terribly dangerous situations completely underprepared.
I’m guessing people who either are romancing Tabby, people who have gotten deeply involved with the Spectacles, or people who have been working with Gilberto on his own secret stuff, will lean towards this mission. You’ll be able to pick it if you have a reasonably good relationship with Tabby.
My plan is to work on this Tabby path through the end of February and much of March.
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Am I in the right thread? I thought we were discussing -
Oh, there we go. Everything is right with the world.
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Just found this thread in 2024 lol. Am so excited for this! 
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Will Aunt Matilda or your other family members ever meet or comment on your love interest? I would love to see what Aunt Matilda has to say about Vyv, or Fitzie for that matter
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I can say with great certainty that she (and your other family members) will meet and comment on your love interest. You can look forward to her coming over to you, putting her arm around you and giving you the most uncomfortable talk of your life.
Tea and Scones takes place largely in and around your ancestral manor, where Aunt Matilda reigns, and all of the possible love interests will, each for their own reasons, be there as well.
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Which club is the best sponsor ?
As far as what will be best in Tea and Scones, here’s a handy guide.
If you want to get involved in increasingly shady and accidentally violent local politics, and handle incendiary materials in a dangerous fashion, pick the Spectacles.
If you want to explore a deadly jungle, wander around half-poisoned, and fight a duel, pick the Royal Adventurer’s Brigade.
If you want to attend a horse race and help Rory out of a horrible financial situation, pick the Ladies’ Garden Club.
If you want to become accessory to a crime-in-progress and discover unseemly personal information about the aristocracy, pick the Mysterious Benefactor.
If you want to acquire some cinematic fame and meddle with an angry chef’s soup, pick the Spud Nuggets.
Each club will have a unique chapter in Tea and Scones, as well as unique quests, rivals, and weird little paths that wend their way through the game.
I’m writing lots, and making progress swiftly, sort of, in the sense of the words stacking up. But to write this with the breadth that I want, even writing swiftly, takes forever. April is all Tabby all the time month, as I work on the Tabby version of chapter seven.
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My sympathies are 1000% with you on this one. Bon courage.
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Author I love your story soooo much! I’m so excited for this game. I hope there would also be cheats that we can buy as well, mwuahhhh 
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For sure there will be. I’m anticipating the same sort of DLC for Tea and Scones as there was for Cakes and Ale.
And this gives me an opportunity to report on progress, which I haven’t done for a while.
So! Here we are in late May and I’m still finishing up Tabby’s quest. I’m ok with this, because I don’t really go into mega-mode until June, so I expected delays while I finished up the semester. In my dreams, I finish Tabby, Gilberto, Vyv, and Fitzie’s quests by August-early September, and then Starling’s quest in…October/November, and Chapter Seven is done by the end of the year. That would leave me with Chapter 8 which will be a tighter chapter and which I can do during spring semester 2025. So I stand a decent chance of finishing some time in 2025.
Now, there’s lots of pieces that have to fall into place for that to happen–in addition to finishing up the above quests (each of which is chapter lengths) I have some significant relationship building with Buck, Juniper, and Pilcrow to work on at the end of Ch. 7 and start of Ch. 8 (no, they are not romantic partners in this particular book, but if you have feelings for them, there just may be something in there for you) and then lay the foundation for the next and final book in the series–the big choices, equivalent to the sponsor choice at the end of Cakes and Ale. These will be questions of money and of employment and of advancing certain relationships. This will of course make the third game quite branchy from the start, but eh, that’s not my problem. That’s future me’s problem, and who cares about him.
This, plus the main adventure of Ch. 8 and a few beefy side quests to start Ch. 8, and some quality time with your main love interest will take lots of time. I don’t quite know what do to with the length of this story, but it happened, and I’m having fun, and I think you will too. (Like, Tabby’s adventure alone is going to end up about as big as Midsummer was.)
But I am choosing to say “yes” to scope creep because it amuses me to do so. That’s why there is an ally you can gain if you have the right stats for it and if you go to one of four possible places in Chapter Five, and this ally has five unique quests that can be accomplished as a side mission during the five main adventures during Chapter Seven, one for each of them. I know, I know.
I am looking forward to finishing up with Tabby and then–probably, tackling Vyv’s adventure.
Will this book cost like $50? Will they choose to release it chapter by chapter so you don’t get sticker shock? I haven’t the faintest idea. I guess we’ll see.
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Can we just kidnap you and lock you in a room with a computer and an endless supply of commodities? Seems like a much more efficient way to get everything done without those petty distractions of life getting involved
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That kind of is what I do between June and August, by choice. I can’t wait. The old self-kidnap.
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