I am, demonstrably, already late with my week 1 progress report. Life has been so busy lately that my time has been carved into three categories: write, work, edit.
Thank god for holiday weekends that allow me to catch up!
Anyways, the final edits for “Ill Met in Tanivar” are turned in, and I should have a cover soon. As promised, I’ve successfully written every morning. Well… I’ve written every morning. Some of the writing this week went in a wrong direction, so it might get scrapped. However, other writing yielded a character pairing that I love so much, they may end up getting their own spin-off series.
So that’s 6.5k words on “To Kill a Queen” (tentative title), plus another 2k-ish that I still have to transcribe. I transcribe things I might dump because otherwise they are lost forever in the bowels of my journal pile.
The snippet of the week actually fits in near the climactic finale of the novelette. I’ve got this one plotted out fairly heavily, so this is likely to make it into the story in one form or another:
“Do you know what Tanivar means in the old tongue? Tân Yfwyr. Fire drinkers. We are the land of the fire drinkers. We built our kingdom on the strength of Summerwen brandy.” Queen Morwen held out a cut crystal glass filled with amber flame. “Drink. Or you insult my land and line.”
Admiral Jardun’s jaw tensed. His shoulders straightened. He didn’t take the glass.
“No? Not to your taste?” The Queen swirled the brandy once before downing it. “Fancy that. Arrest him.”
See there? Those two years of Welsh are paying off. What, you were hoping for something spicier? Okay, how’s this:
It was so like the fastidious Asamir to skirt death, only to grumble about smelling bad. Sinjin’s irritation broke. He leaned over and kissed Asamir’s brow, staying just a moment too long, appreciating that Asamir could still stink and complain and totter out of bed before he was supposed to. “There’s some spare nightshirts in the clothes press.”
“I’ll still smell like a sack of sweaty balls.”
“Some of us like the smell of–Ow!” Sinjin rubbed his side where Asamir had pinched him. “Fine. Sponge bath it is.”
Happy now?
Edits to Chiaroscuro go slowly. I printed out Act III and I’m trying to sink into it, but after the crit session I had a few weeks ago, my brain is torn in two directions. Part of me knows I need to fix the last act before I can go back and start working through the issues that came up in the crit, but another part of me just wants to FIX ALL THE THINGS at once.
Day by day, the work gets done.
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Speaking of work, back to it!
Alyc Helms 