I wrote more than nothing this week

Not much more than nothing, but my additional word count for The Shadow of Vale was not zero.

It was about two hundred leaving this draft around 67,300 words at the moment.

I am working through the first actual battle scene and I know where its going, but the actual scene is a bit difficult.

I am still working on my new story in the back ground, but it isn’t taking over every spare thought I have at the moment.

Here is a little Snippet from the past two weeks of scribbles:

              As they approached the ruins, the air shifted. The guard began whispering amongst themselves and threw questioning glances at Zuriel and Aila. Finally, Fintan broke off and came back to them as they slowed and stopped.

              “I thought you didn’t finish imbuing the stones.” He glanced to Aila though he stood before Zuriel.

              Aila frowned. “I didn’t.” She made her way forward and pushed through the guard who reluctantly let her pass. She let out a gasp as she reached the front and found herself standing before the graveyard where every stone shone with nymph light.

              “I don’t understand.” Zuriel’s voice was soft. He turned and their eyes met. With a start he realized that hers shone with hope. Then it dawned on him: Aila hadn’t finished. There must be another nymph. A slow grin broke out across his face.

              “Heads up!” Fintan cried as he rushed forward, pulling Aila and Zuriel back into the guard. “Shield! Shield!”

              The hope ignited in Zuriel’s chest by the sight of the stones was immediately smothered by the realization that there were illusions and wards all around them that he hadn’t noticed.

Hit 67K this week

Only wrote a few hundred words this week in The Shadow of Vale, but I did write a few hundred words in The Shadow of Vale this week.

I hurt my back Monday night and it somehow didn’t get me any extra writing time so I spent most of my creative energy toying with my new story and the world building involved in it. It is feeling heavily influenced by David Estes, probably because I am reading through Fatemarked.

Since I didn’t really add enough to The Shadow of Vale, I thought it might be fun to share a little scribble from my new story.

As a warning, this is a death scene. For whatever reason, only the tragic scribbles came out good enough to share.

              Keegan scanned the area and found no other attackers. He wiped his dagger on his pant leg and sheathed it and his sword as he approached Russ’ body. As he looked up, he caught a glimpse of a spark in the air.

               Panic flooded his chest as he stared at the empty air where Fiera always appeared. Where he’d only seen a spark.

              “Come on. Come on. Come on.” He muttered as he scanned the sky. Where was she? Maybe it hadn’t been as long as he thought. Keegan’s eyes fell to Russ’ body where it lay still in a pool of crimson. “Come on.”

              Keegan tried to swallow and took two steps toward Russ before hesitating. Maybe he hadn’t died? Surely that spark wasn’t Fiera. It couldn’t be. Russ wasn’t even in his second century. He couldn’t have a burnt out pheonix.

              With mounting dread, he forced himself forward and knelt beside Russ. He knew from the way his eyes looked without seeing that he was dead. He’d been dead for too long.

              “Russ.” He blinked back tears as he laid his hands on his friend’s shoulders. His Rune-brother. He looked again at the empty sky where Fiera had failed to appear and then back at the lifeless body of his closest friend. “No.” The word fell from his lips little more than a whisper. “You, you can’t. You’re a Rune. We’re Runes. We don’t stay dead.”

              Keegan fell back, his breaths coming in ragged gasps as the enormity of what had happened, or hadn’t happened, began to sink it.

              Russ was dead. And so was his phoenix. He was never coming back.

Progress

Added just under 1k this week which isn’t much, but considering I wrote some 3k on my new idea, I am happy I did any work in it.

After losing most of a story idea to not writing down my thoughts, I am hesitant to drop the new idea to keep working on this draft, but I also don’t want to stop working on this, so I’ll probably just do it at a snails pace for a while.

Here’s a bit of what I wrote this week:

              He shifted the bag on his shoulder and thought back over everything he could remember Agur telling him before he’d fled and left him behind to maintain the ward. He wasn’t to leave was the impression he’d gotten, but surely Agur had a plan if anything happened to him, right?

              Fala stopped abruptly and stilled him with a hand to his chest.

              “What?” He asked as she scrutinized him.

              “You look like I’m taking you to your execution.”

              He let out a breath and looked toward the doorway which wasn’t yet in sight. How could he explain why he didn’t want to leave? He couldn’t very well let on that he was part of a the very complex wards keeping Azazel and the rest of Samael’s men out of Agur’s extensive libraries.

              “It’s dumb.” He said as he turned his gaze back to her.

              She raised her brow at him. “Go on.”

              “I’m waiting for my brother. This is the only place I know he’ll come and,” he glanced briefly back toward the entrance, “I feel like if I leave, I’ll miss him.”

              Fala’s hand fell to her side and all tension vanished from her bearing. A smile spread across her lips and chuckle escaped her which quickly turned into full on laughter.

              Harkin frowned. “What’s so funny?”

              “You are waiting for your brother?” Her question was punctuated with more laughter.

              “Why is that funny? I had come here to find him just before Samael got here and I lost my chance to actually meet him.” He crossed his arms and wondered why her laughter annoyed him so much.

              “Oh, come on, a brother? There is no way you have a brother.” Her laughter tapered off and she wiped at her eyes.

              Harkin scowled at her. “I do.”

              “Oh!” She pressed her hand to her mouth. “A brother.” Another giggle escaped as she turned and started down the hall again.

A bit distracted at the moment

The draft now sits at 65,500 words with the new word count goal being helpful. I have, however, been derailed the past few days by a new story idea.

I never thought I’d be one of these writers with 20 different stories, but my mind just latches on sometimes and I just kind of have to ride it out. The new idea is in the same universe and deals with several of the same ideas, so it isn’t as complete of a diversion as some other ideas have been, so hopefully I get back on track soon.

In the meantime, here’s a little snippet from this week.

              “What was the verdict on the bleeding powder?” Aila asked as she met him near the edge of the garden.

              “Not perfect.” He showed his bandaged hand which brought a look of concern from Aila. “I had to test it and it didn’t seem fair to take questionable powder to someone in the infirmary.” He shrugged.

              “Hmm.” She pulled her eyes from the bandage and gave him an approving nod. “What was off?”

              Zuriel grinned. “It needed some more Eucalyptus.”

              Aila grimaced. “That’s the pain management part, isn’t it?”

              “Yeah.” He looked back at his hand a moment before returning his attention to her. “Anyway, he was less impressed with my self-assigned homework than I’d hoped, so I had a different idea for our time together.”

              “Oh?” Aila planted her hands on her hips and looked at him expectantly.

              “I don’t know enough about Vale.”

              Her face fell somewhat. “I left in my second decade; I might not be as helpful as you need for that.”

              “Eventually we might need to move to the library to look stuff up together or something, but Cyrus let me in on the fact that I was born in Lux and I’m curious what you know about it since you were from there too.”

              “You were born in Lux?” Aila asked with evident surprise.

              “Yeah,” Zuriel turned and they slowly made their way to the benches nearby. “The night it fell apparently. Cyrus and Akil brought me from Lux to Halcyon. My parents were apparently important in the city, dad was the head guard for the chief.”

              Aila gasped, drawing his attention to her from the ground where he’d been absently staring. “You’re Amin’s son?”

The week’s progress and future plans

This week I’ve brought this draft up to 63,300 words. Some sleep issues have made writing a bit challenging this week, but I am fairly happy with the progress all the same.

I have been considering my goals with my writing and this project specifically and I am planning to raise my daily writing goal with the hopes of completing this draft in the next few months. Hopefully by the end of the year, I’ll have a full draft complete.

I have been operating with a word goal of 100 words a day, but I think I am going to bring my minimum up to 500. Hopefully I can settle into getting about 3k added each week which isn’t too far beyond what I’ve been doing and raising the goal may result in hitting even higher goals.

This week I did get some clear ideas about a section of the story that’s been kind of a wasteland for this version of it. Despite it being pretty far down the line, I am pleased to have a clearer idea of where the story is going.

Here’s a little snippet from this week’s labors:

              Zuriel pulled back, though his hands remained at her waist and her’s on his shoulders. “There are two clear times my decisions put you in danger.”

              “The first time with Pyre? When you ran back and acted as a human shield for me, which you did again, last night? I’m supposed to count those as failures?” She raised her eyebrow as if to dare him to disagree with her.

              “If I made better choices, I wouldn’t have had to be a human shield.”

              “Dueling shield.” She corrected with a grin. “That’s like a fancy shield with several imbuements. Extra safe.”

              Zuriel tried and failed to suppress a grin. “Okay, fine. I make a good shield. I’m still sorry for putting you in a position to need a shield.”

              Aila let out a huff and grabbed his face in her hands. “The correct response to ‘thank you’ is ‘you’re welcome’. Just accept my thanks.”

Over 60k now

The draft is now sitting around 60,800 words. I got to a large chunk that I had previously planned out, but I didn’t realize how hard it would be to actually write it as it included some very cringe behavior of some of the characters and it was giving me second hand embarrassment. As a result, I wrote it about 100 words at a time.

But I have got to the other end and found the next phase in one of the subplots which has been a lot of fun to work with.

Given the amount of cringe I wrote this week, I have just a little snippet to share.

Enjoy!

              Halvar watched the dragon take flight before turning his attention to Cyrus who had stopped and turned to see the dragon leave. Narrowing his eyes, he hurried toward the naim.

              “What did you do?” Halvar demanded.

              “How dare you!” Aila cried as she rounded on Cyrus. “He’s still learning and I was safe. There is not a chance in the void that he would have let anything happen to me.”

              “He couldn’t even touch me after hours of training.” Cyrus countered.

              “Of course not, he’s only been training for a month.” Halvar said.

              “He’s given more hope to Vale in a month than you have your entire life.” Aila sneered.

              Halver looked from Cyrus to Aila as they glared at one another.

              “What did you say to him?” he asked as his eyes landed on Cyrus.

              “He told him if Zuriel is the hope of Vale, we have none.” Aila answered through clinched teeth.

              Halvar let out a growl and grabbed Cyrus, spinning him toward him. “He has made more progress in a month in four different areas than some men do in years. If he fails, it will not be because he is not capable and it won’t be because he hasn’t poured every once of himself into this, it will be because you have taken the heart out of him.” Halvar shoved Cyrus back and turned to Lonan. “Can you get me to Zuriel?”

              Lonan nodded and led Halvar away to Lyulf.

Progress update

I got a bit more writing done this week. It’s now at 58,600 (That’s actually the exact word count when I stopped), so I got about 4k written this week.

I have reached a section of the story that I’ve had planned out since I got any kind of feel for how this version was going to be so I am actually a little surprised I didn’t get like 15k written for the week. I am just scratching the surface of the sequence as I have it planned.

It’s not happening exactly when I planned and is a little muddled with another planned battle sequence, but I think I have a good solution for the conflicting plans I made.

It is a lot of fun to finally get to write this bit that I’ve been thinking about and planning for a while.

Here’s a little snippet of my labors this week:

  

Zuriel swallowed thickly. He wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting, but watching Aila wrestle with the overwhelming grief as she gave burial rites to her friends left him gutted. He watched her with knitted brow as she kept moving through the stones, occasionally wiping her face as she went. She was in pain, doing something only she was capable of. He couldn’t even share the burden of it with her.

So, he simply watched as she imbued the headstones of her friends, slowly illuminating the graves of the last nymphs of Vale that had sat dark for more than two decades.

When she sat heavily before a stone, her shoulder’s shaking with her sobs, he got up and went to her, wrapping her in his arms. She leaned into him, accepting his offered comfort.

He was so focused on her he almost didn’t notice the use of magic in time.

Zuriel sucked in a quick breath and threw up a block just in time to intercept a spear of ice.

“Sorcerers.” He hissed as Aila let out a surprised yelp.

He sent his mind out, there were at least a dozen. Two more shards of ice exploded against the block and a third sailed past them and shattered as it struck one of the trees at the edge of the clearing. A bolt of lightning glanced off the edge of the block as Zuriel pulled Aila to her feet. “Run!” he yelled and pushed her ahead of him.

           

Another slow writing week

The third draft is now about 54,800 words so I got about 2k written this week.

Haven’t explored too many new ideas, most of the scenes I worked on this week were centered around one idea.

Not much to share, but I am rather fond of a particular dialog scene with Halvar and Zuriel.

Enjoy!

              “All of that is besides the point. We don’t get to choose each other; we have no other options.”

              “Of course, you get to choose each other. It’s just a little less difficult.” Giving up on getting Zuriel to look at him, he returned to his planter. “I think if you really stopped to think about it, you’d find that even if you had all of Vale to pick from, you’d pick her. You guys don’t actually have to take on the restoration of your entire race. Even with the two of you, there wouldn’t be enough genetic variation.”

              Zuriel dropped a load of soil in the planter and stopped. “You’re right.”

              “I usually am.” 

              “Even if we had fifty kids, they’d all have to take non-nymph spouses. In two generations, we’ll be back to no nymphs in Vale.” Zuriel let out a breath, surprised at the pain the thought brought him. It’d been just a couple weeks and he already identified enough with the race whose magic he didn’t even possess, to feel the loss of it.

              “Maybe.”

              Zuriel turned to Halvar who went on with his work. “What do you mean, maybe?”

              Halvar shrugged. “Tala was found empty. Not destroyed. There is an entire city of nymphs unaccounted for.”

              “Unaccounted for? What does that mean?”

              Halvar grinned at Zuriel as he went to grab his liner. “I thought you spoke the common tongue.”

              Zuriel let out a growl. “Where did they go?”

              “If we knew, we couldn’t really say they were unaccounted for, could we?”

              “Halvar, I swear.”

              “They probably left with the help of some naims. Either to another planet or a subrealm. Likely another planet given the power it takes to build a subrealm.”

              “Does Aila know?”

              “Where they went?”

              “That they exist.”

              “Of course she does. She went through Tala when she fled Lux. It was already abandoned when her, Kyra and Zelena got there.”

              “Zelena?”

              “Kyra’s sister. Do you ever actually talk to Aila?”

              “Yes, I talk to Aila.” He grumbled. “Just apparently not about anything.” He sighed and continued to return the soil to the planter box.

Much more reading than writing this week

I read like 6 books this week so I have been much more absorbed in reading than writing. The Shadow of Vale is now sitting around 52,800 words so I wrote a little under 3k this past week.

I normally try to update Saturday or Sunday but I read three books in the past two days so I honestly forgot. Haha

I’ve been reading a bit of fluff so I haven’t exactly been in a fantasy headspace, but I am doing a reread of The Bound and The Broken series by Ryan Cahill (Highly recommend if you’ve never heard of it. He’s a fantastic writer and story teller.) so hopefully that will help get me back into gear to finish this draft.

I am still wrestling with a lot of the plot lines and characters but most of what I wrote this week was centered around Zuriel and Aila’s relationship. Given the reality that the core of the story is centered around them, I guess that makes sense.

While there isn’t much to pick from this week, I did want to include a little snippet. Pretty inline with my reading this week. Enjoy!

              As he neared the garden his mouth fell open at the transformation. It was no longer a simple, cleanly manicured garden, but a rich complex display of what seemed to be hundreds of plants ornamented by stone structures and two fountains.

              “Wow.” He said softly as he reached out to touch a draping vine with vibrant pink flowers.

              “Agur said this garden is mine now.” She raised her shoulders in a sweetly apologetic way. “I might have gotten carried away.”

              “It’s amazing.”

              Aila said nothing for a moment as Zuriel slowly stepped into the garden, admiring her work.

              “Do you recognize any of them?”

              Zuriel turned to her with faint alarm in his eyes. “Are these all medical plants?”

              Aila laughed. Zuriel couldn’t help but smile.

              “Not all of them, but most of them.”

              “Well, this is a whole lot more than seven.” He chuckled and continued his study of the garden.

              “I’ve been doing some research.”

              Zuriel turned back to her. “How does it work? The life point? Do you have to know the plants to create them?”

              Aila stepped forward to stand beside him. “Not exactly. When I’m connected to the life point they are just there. I know a lot about them just from pulling their essence from the life point, but I don’t necessarily know their names or how we use them.” She pointed to one plant that appeared to be a purple cactus. “I don’t know what that one is. It’s similar to Aloe, but it has a higher antiseptic quality.”

              Zuriel let out an awed breath. “That’s amazing. Of all the magics I didn’t get.” He let out a brief laugh. “The only magic I’ll never be able to teach is what I’ll pass on. You’ll have to be the one to teach-” He snapped his mouth shut as he realized what he had been saying.

              “Our children.” Aila finished softly. “I was wondering if that had occurred to you yet.”

              His heart raced as he scanned the garden, no longer seeing it, simply avoiding looking at her. He had an overwhelming desire to apologize and he wasn’t sure why.

This is escalating kinda quickly

I wrote 10k this week, landing just over 50k total now.

I find myself lacing in several loose ends into the story that even I am not sure what I’m doing with it yet. If I don’t weave them in at some point, I’ll go back and nix them, but at the moment, Harkin, and Samael are doing curious things I haven’t fully fleshed out yet and I created a character kind of in the background when I made Pyre’s first chosen link and I haven’t decided if he will matter or not.

Setting up those possible subplots was the biggest addition to the story this week aside from doing some work on Zuriel and Aila’s relationship. It feel a bit strange with three strains actively going now, to just pick one for a snippet, and given how much I wrote this week I think I’ll give a little peak into at least two of the threads.

Enjoy!

              “What’s this?” Zuriel took the sword more reflexively than conscious decision.

              “Your sword, what else would it be?”

              “My sword?” Zuriel looked down at the sheathed sword in his hands. The belt and scabbard were obviously new, the faint scent of leather reached his nose as he drew it closer to study the hilt. His eye was immediately drawn to the green stone set in the pommel that, he was disappointed to find, he didn’t recognize. He wrapped his hand around the wooden grip which he guessed was Alder. The guard was titanium, hard enough to block most metals and he grinned as he became aware of the faint presence of a cold imbuement.

              He licked his lips, a smile he couldn’t suppress spreading as he pulled the sword from its scabbard. He held the sword up and turned it, taking in the simple beauty of the double-edged blade. The beautiful and strong Afigus steel was forged straight and clean with a fuller running down the center of the blade.

              He held the sword out a moment before swinging it down in a slicing motion to the left, then the right, getting a feel for the balance.

              “Hand and a half. Double-edged. Versatile. You can weld it single handed with a shield or two handed.” Cyrus stepped closer. “At least, you will be able to weld it single handed. Put it on, we’ll work on drawing and get you familiar with the weight and balance of it.”

              Zuriel sheathed the blade and drew the belt around his waist. With Cyrus’ unusually patient guidance, he got the blade situated comfortably on his off side.

              “Alright,” Cyrus stepped back, leaving ample space between them to draw swords. “It sounds easy to draw a sword, but given that you’ve never done it, understand there is a right and wrong way to do it.” He demonstrated a smooth draw, gripping the sword smoothly in both hands and falling into a simple starting stance.

              Zuriel tried to imitate the motion, but the sword seemed to catch in the scabbard causing his hand to slip off the hilt entirely. As the sword tipped down, he grabbed at it reflexively earning a set of deep cuts as his hand involuntarily closed on the blade in his attempt to catch it.

              He cursed and drew his hand back, allowing the blade to slide free and land in the dirt beside him throwing up a small cloud of dust.

              Cyrus sighed as Zuriel clinched his fist to slow the bleeding. He could feel Aila’s eyes on him and his face warmed with embarrassment.

              “Kal!” Cyrus called for the field healer stepped forward to examine Zuriel’s hand. “In the future, I would recommend just letting the sword drop.”

              After another deep breath, Harkin opened the door and stepped inside. Fala had traded in her seductive dress for a more practical suit of leather armor.

              “Ah,” she smiled at him. “I assume they told you I will be your boss for the remainder of my time here?”

              “Yes.”

              Fala studied him for a long moment. “I’m not going to attack you. Relax.”

              “Why are you doing this?”

              Fala shrugged and turned her attention back to a pack she was loading up on her bed. “You interest me. I am not accustomed to being refused and you are such a perfect specimen for my purposes I am not willing to give up just yet.” She looked over her shoulder and grinned at him. “I’ll win you over yet.”

              “I can’t leave the grounds.” He raised his cuffed wrist as he eyed the bag she hefted onto her shoulder.

              “If I were taking you out with me, you would be carrying the bag.” She looked over the room a moment before nodding to herself. “No, I just wanted to make sure my request had been granted.” She passed Harkin who turned to follow her. “I will be back for lunch at the pentacle. Please be here with it. You’re free till then.”

              Harkin frowned as she stepped through the door.  He stood standing in the empty room a moment trying to make sense of the new situation he found himself in. Fala had had him assigned as her personal servant within the palace. He was safe within the palace, but at greater risk of her bed.

              Information. He needed more information.

              He went to the door and opened it to peek out into the hall. He listened carefully before closing the door softly. He was alone for now. He turned back to the room and examined it. The bed was unmade, two trunks were set at the foot of the bed, one open, one closed. He went to the open trunk and carefully searched it. Just clothes and a disturbing number of weapons. What use had a sorceress of her level of so many daggers? There were at least ten. With a frown, Harkin resettled the items and moved to the second trunk.