Where Personal and Professional Life Collide...

Today, as those of you who follow me on Twitter may have seen, I wrote my way into a massive conflict between Story & Outline. Decided to give them pistols at 10 paragraphs, and let them sort it out.

Much to my surprise, that worked.

Or rather, what worked was, I looked at History and said "History, I seem to have goofed. Story as she's written is good. But outline is also really good, and will get me to my end destination. What can you give me, to help get these two back together?"

And History reached into her bag of tricks and said, "well, I have this town over here that was around 30 years later than your time period, but oh hey, in my pocket here I have an actual reason why that town could easily have existed even 50 years earlier, based on your divergent history. Will that do?"

And then, because I thanked her nicely, she tapped me on the shoulder half an hour later and said "and I found this character, too. Can you use him?"

Why yes, yes I could.

Which is the roundabout way of saying that the 2500 words I wrote today felt more like 4000. Because there was a lot of negotiation going on.

Also: writing is physical work. I is sore and in dire need of a massage. When I hit Rough Draft 0, there is a deep tissue massage with my name on it...


And god, I really want to talk about this book, and this world, but I don't even know what to say, or what i can say, or how annoyed people will be if I babble about a book you're not going to be able to read for another year....?



(I've been giving away snippets over on Tumblr, as an outlet, but I barely have a hundred followers over there, so sometimes it feels like whispering into the void...)

matociquala has so decreed it. The idea here is that we post the first lines of unfinished stories, on the theory that we might then be inspired to finish a few.

(If this works, yay. If not... no harm no foul. If nothing else, it shakes some dust off.)


Snarky Water (working title): Sometimes, the gods give you gifts.

A World of Unfortunate Place Names: There were no safe places in Portside.

Praise the Devil: The horse was an old one, and piebald to boot, warning he’d go lame sooner rather than not, but Jack would be damned if he’d give up and walk.

Location, Location: Did you ever wonder why do some locations just kill any business that locates there?

BabyGirl (working title): “Loving someone, letting yourself love them, means giving them part of yourself. And you don’t get that back when it ends.”

The Cost: “My lady, I dislike this place.”

The Devil's House: The way the story’d been told her, a preacherman came into town before there was much of a town at all, just the saloon and a couple-three homesteads, looked around, and pronounced that they’d be the first to be washed away, come the Flood.

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Strong Earth: Elizabeth sat very still and sipped her tea.

Reason To Believe: “Pepper-pepper solo, plain solo, two cokes.”

Beyond the Real: Snow rested on the windowsill, frosting the empty street beyond, a white-blue shadow in the dawn light.

Frontiers: The message arrived with the morning post, the waxed envelope sealed with the official mark of the New Settlements, the stylized iris rising over the watercat dormant, the logos almost unreadable at that size.

Water of Life: "Fuck on a stick, I hate this place."

Speakeasy: "Joan. Must you?"



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in other news, Still Unbearably Hot. And I have been reminded - rather forcibly - why I do not go out and about in Very Hot Weather, as despite hydration and frequent shade/SC, I was still felled by a massive headsqueeze. A thunderstorm would be most welcome now, O Weather Forces.