… and I got out of bed a lot earlier than usual, which is a surprise to me. Art Bell is talking about out-of-body/altered states and I am working on my second cup of coffee – my crazy life, right? I have absolutely no experience with this, so I’m finding this mildly interesting. Anyways – I’m up now, so I am going to try to make the best of it. Mostly by not passing out when the coffee loses its effect.

The novel has hit the half-way point for the rewrites as far as pages go (page 106 out of 211) and I am very happy about finally solving a problem that was pointed out to me by my editor. The initial problem was that I needed to have the main character go back to group that had been fairly cruel to her and it led to me writing one of my best horror scenes ever. I really, really wanted to keep that scene, so I tried to think of any way to keep them with the group. So, I decided to go around that scene and work on some of the other pages. Disgusted with myself (… and it was Saturday), I took a late shower. As I was scrubbing away, inspiration hit me. I hopped out of the shower, dried off myself enough to write down a couple of words to remind me what I needed to do:

Caravan Riding

I would also like to note that I didn’t completely dry myself off and it was below freezing (my house is a little drafty) – yes, that is my dedication to the Craft: the risk of frostbite in places that shouldn’t have to worry about frostbite. What I mean by this is that there are tribes of barbarians from the North that come down every now and then – think of Viking raids. The caravan routes are prime targets, so the caravans that travel during this time hire people to guard and ride with them. The other main character (Anya) is from an area that deals with the barbarians (collectively called the Kuonradi – based off of the area they live) on a regular basis. They run into the group that the main character (Rhona) fled from. They interact (read: someone gets a bloody nose and rich at the same time) and Anya asks to ride along with a caravan because they need help fending off the barbarians. We get some halfway decent character building and in the morning Anya walks down to join the caravan… only to find out that the caravan that she volunteered to protect includes the group that was cruel to Rhona. Rhona tells Anya to back out, let the barbarians take the caravan and do the dirty work. Anya tells Rhona that as much as she would like to watch the barbarians pillage, ruin and rape the group, but she gave her word and if she backed out, it would get back to her home and she would catch hell for it. So – I get to keep the scene, get some more character building in on everyone and everyone’s happy… well, except for the guy with the broken nose – but he’s a douchebag, so it doesn’t count.

Well, I am getting another cup of coffee before I get back to re-writing the two chapters and trying to trim the rest of the novel down to the 70-75K range. Once that’s done, I will have a crack team of readers pour over the final draft and give me a go-no go before I publish it. With any luck, I can meet the deadline and have it out in the while by the end of June.

I hope your day goes as well.

Sincerely,

Seething Apathy