Derailed by a migraine

A little late sharing this week as I was trying to be as still in as dark a room as is possible while caring for two children under the age of 4.

Feeling much better today, but I didn’t get as much writing in this week as I would have liked, not quite 1k. I feel I have lost my grip one a few of the threads and am going through the painful process of rereading the beginning of this very rough draft.

While I dislike everything I have written at the moment (a side effect of rereading this very rough draft), I did want to share a sweet little moment between Zuriel and Aila from this week’s writing.

Enjoy:

Zuriel felt his heart studder and marveled that she was not only alive but had given him her promise that she would be his wife. This was the first kiss of a lifetime of kisses and eight hundred years was quite a lifetime.

He broke the kiss and Aila settled back into her pillow with a contented sigh that added to the warmth in his chest.

“Better?” He asked with a grin and was rewarded with a light laugh.

“Better.” She confirmed.

Zuriel brushed his nose against hers, not wishing to put distance between them again, especially after the past days of tortured waiting.

The sound of the door opening forced his hand and with a slight groan, he stood.

Another 1k added this week.

The Shadow of Vale is now over 72k words which is exciting. I have reached a happy little bubble in the story which is good to write, though it’s a little hazy what is actually happening in this little bubble.

I have always kind of struggled with whether or not to actually publish any of my stories, but lately I have settled on publishing. It will be a long process if the past is any indication, but I am optimistic that I can get one of my stories (hopefully this one) ready to share.

Thank you to all of my that follow this little blog of mine, you’re consistent little nudges of encouragement mean a lot to me and I hope to craft a story you will enjoy and be able to experience beyond the little snippets I share here.

Speaking of snippets, here is little glimpse of Zuriel and Aila.

“How long…have I been…asleep?”

Zuriel swallowed past a lump in his throat, enraptured by the sound of her voice though it was rough and quiet. “Seven days.”

“You haven’t left, have you?” Her eyes stayed mostly closed though she opened them at the end of her question to see him answer.

He felt his eyes fill as he smiled down at her. He was talking to her! “Only when I absolutely had to.” He paused, taking in the sight of her looking back at him. “I wanted to be here when you woke up.”

Her eyes fluttered closed as her lips raised in a slight smile. “I’m glad you’re here.”

Zuriel let out a breath as he cupped her cheek in his palm and leaned over to press his head to hers. “I thought I lost you.”

“I’m here. I’m okay.” Her hand rested on his arm and she gave a weak squeeze.

He pulled back to look at her. Her eyes opened slowly and locked on his despite obvious weariness. “I love you, Aila. I should have told you sooner.” He leaned down and pressed a lingering kiss to her forehead before pulling back to met her gaze again, but her eyes were closed, a small smile on her lips.

“I love you, too Zuriel.”

Zuriel smiled at her, stroking her cheek with his thumb as her breaths grew deep and even. He kissed her forehead again before collapsing back into his chair, tears of relief filled his eyes.

Falling back into the story

Little late this week, I had a busy weekend and haven’t been able to sit down to do an update till now.

I had some good, lengthy writing sessions this week and got The Shadow of Vale over 71k words. I am in part of the story that has kinda stayed the same since early versions. It’s familiar but different and a rather emotional bit of the story so it has taken a bit out of me to get into, but I have come into the happier portion, so I think that’s helping me write more.

It also helps that the new story seems to be napping for now.

A snippet from this weeks efforts for your enjoyment:

Zuriel sat with his head resting on his arm as he had done most of his waking moments for the past day. Everything ached, not only from the awkward positions he’d spent his day and night in, but also from the battle. Once the adrenaline and shock had worn off, he’d discovered two gashes he’d sustained and several bruises he hadn’t noticed.

None of it mattered though.

The only thing filling his mind was the woman who lay unconscious on the bed before him. He held her limp hand in his hoping for the slightest twitch. He frequently searched her face for any sign that she would be coming back to him.

“Please…” the soft prayer fell from his lips for the thousandth time.

Since coming to Vale he’d been taught about the nymph God, the Great Creator, whom they sometimes called Voa. To his ear it sounded like the God he’d learned about at church and he wasn’t sure which one he was praying to anymore.

He’d pray to the whole pantheon of sorcerer and naim gods if it meant hearing her voice again; Feeling her touch.

Slow but steady progress

I took a week off from updates as I forgot and also, didn’t write much. I am making lots of progress in my new story, but I am stuck with a few of the subplots for The Shadow of Vale.

The Shadow of Vale is now over 69k so I am making slow and steady progress. A far cry from the 3k I wanted to be getting through each week, but I do have some 35 pages of scribbles for the other story, which I also am enjoying.

Since there are such spoilers in this part that I am working on for The Shadow of Vale, I have just a brief snippet to share:

He tied off the bandage and shook his head as he looked over her. “This is beyond me. I don’t know how she’s alive, Zuriel.” His voice had lost its even tone and when Zuriel met his gaze there was an anxiety in them that rekindled his own fears. “You need to get her to Rafael. Now.”

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.