Here's another excerpt from my next soon-to-be-released novel, The Boyar's Curse. This one is the closing from Chapter 8: The Troll.

The setup is that the old man, Rik, and his companions have sought shelter in a lost valley. A place where old stories, from the gods that his father followed but Rik left behind to follow a different path, still yet walk. Old legends; old monsters haunt this valley.

And Rik, Lian, and Katie have found one barring their path...

Excerpt from The Boyar's Curse, Chapter 8: The Troll

He didn't take a stance, simply moved around the troll. Circling, not engaging. It rotated to follow him, but didn't move from the stones. "You dance. Slowly, as befits your age."

"I don't challenge a thrall."

"I'm not a slave," it growled, and swiped a thick fist toward Rik.

Rik stepped back to let the fist pass, and noted the troll kept his claws buried in that fist. "You say you were chained here, by the gods."

"The god, the one-eyed one," it replied, and punched out, a jab testing the range. "But he did not enslave me."

"And how is this different?"

The troll opened its fists, showing the claws longer than Rik's forearm. Then it swiped again, and Rik dodged again, just, before those claws that gave it full reach. "I do no god's bidding." And it punched, fingers and claws open and solid, and Rik rolled in the dirt to avoid the lances.

"Just a troll, minding its bridge. Are you sure you built it, and not the god?"

The troll roared, anger and shame intermingled, thrashed and ran out in a full charge at last.

Rik stood, in the face of the charge, that ended with the troll, now fully twice his height, looming over him to block the sun, caught on the ball of its foot by the last cobblestone. Calls of rage echoed from the mountain faces too far away to see; birds screamed in pain, and the horses echoed them.

Rik's ears rang with the noise, but he stood fast against the troll's anger. And noted that it didn't answer his question.

And, he felt something else, besides the anticipation of the fight still to come.

Pity, echoing the far-too human eyes he saw before him, pools of brown too soft, and too filled with tears, for what should have been a monster's face.

The old man sighed, and his shoulders slumped, ever so slightly. The troll extended further, against the force that held it to the stone in the face of a challenge, so that only claws gripped the river stone, and grabbed for the man one more time, hissing and spitting and screaming now in full battle rage.

And the old man leapt one more time into battle. The warrior's song sang in his blood.

This wasn't a dual, formal and elegant and clean. Nor was it the vicious fight of equal warriors.

This was a bar brawl, or the wolf versus the buffalo, overlong, bloody, nasty. The troll shattered the spear shaft, carved new wounds in Rik's shoulders and legs, long gashes paired and torn.

But Rik held the spear by the smallest fraction of remaining haft. The blade bit the troll, slashed tendons in the legs and arms and left it crippled. And falling. Age, and cunning, and Rik knew the boundaries the troll couldn't cross.

It fell to the stones. In the end, he crawled over the crippled arms, dragged himself up the troll's chest, set the spear blade against the troll's eye. "What is your toll?" he asked.

He looked into the troll's eyes for the answer. A memory swam there.

A boy, naked shivering, covered in blood, led by another old man, limping one-eyed spear-carrier, to a stone face. There was a shallow carved niche in the face. The old man not-a-man chained the boy to the wall, and called to the stones until they rose up to cover the child.

And the god stepped away, leaving stones fused into troll-shape and a new thing born. With the brown doe-eyes of the sacrificed boy.

"Release," the monster-who-wasn't whispered.

The warrior who had been Boyar gave him that release, sliding the spear point home. He felt the boy's spirit as it passed; the spirit whispered "He wrought more than you know. All exchanges here must be equal, and you will have more than passage. Take strength, though you don't want it."

Rikard felt the spirit's curse settle on him as the body of the monster that wasn't faded. It took his father's spear with it, and left him bloody, wounded, and weeping for the boy and the weight of consequences left behind.

"Papa, why are you crying?" She touched his shoulder, one soft hand looking for answers. "Wasn't it just a monster?"

The empty stones swam, then cleared through the tears. "Katie, run get me a waterbag, please?"

She did that, and Lian, giving up on the horses, came with her. "Here, Papa."

He doused his head and face with the water, glad for the shock of it. Lian clucked over his wounds while he thought about how to answer the child's question.

What ran through his mind over and over again was the memory of the boy, the sacrifice. He'd have been just barely older than the girl beside him.

Just old enough to know what was happening, if not why. Rik remembered the troll's confusion over the lack of challengers for the bridge that he'd been set as guard over.

The images stirred echoes in his own memory, of his father and mother, and the places he'd carved for himself. He let those memories run free as something to think about besides the needle and thread Lian was pulling from her pack. And the alcohol she used to clean the wounds.

He waited, through gritted teeth and minor agony, for the cleaning and suturing to end before he told the boy's story.

Lian stood over him, now with a clean rag and a bar of soap. "Here, now that you're done with your story, wash up as best you can without tearing the stitches."

Easier said than done; in the end, she only had to redo a little of her surgery, and he was close to something like clean again. "There, only the memories, and the story."

"Do you believe it?" Lian asked. "That that troll really was a captive of his god, and not just a monster?"

"How many trolls have you ever met, Lian? I've been nine times 'round the world, and I've never actually seen one until today."

"You didn't answer my question."

"I don't know," he said, finally. He crawled over to the bridge post, and used it to pull himself up. "Maybe I'm just telling myself a story to cover up the fact that I killed it."

Katie looked over the ground where the troll had fallen at the last, and found a piece of something metal, winking in the sun. She picked it up and brought it to her father. "Here, Papa. I believe you, and the troll boy's story."

She gave him a tiny silver spear, carved in minute detail that his fingers told him matched his father's old spear. It hung from a silver chain, links of a cunning style he'd never seen. He held the amulet up to the light, and wondered.

Lian stepped over, gave the tiny spear a touch to set the amulet swinging. "That chain's too short for you to wear. Or me."

"I know." He didn't want to. Something about the amulet pulled at him; he felt the troll-boy's curse, a tragic last gift.

But when he put the chain over Katie's head, and she patted the amulet into place underneath her shirt, that tragic gift settled, the weight a little lesser, quiescent.

He held Katie at arms length for a moment, just looking at her. Then he hugged her, close and tight. "Maybe it's time we went and got the horses, before they decide they're better off finding people who pay more attention to them."

Lian turned around, cursed, and ran off to chase down her ride.

The mule nickered amusement while allowing Rikard and Katie to gather in his lead. The mare they rode joined them, though she rolled her eyes and shook her head when Rik picked up her reins. "I know, I know. I look like a bad stretch of road. Let's just agree to not let it destroy our relationship, hmm?"

The horse butted him with her forehead, stomped one hoof, and then settled in to let Katie pat her neck. "Finished, Lian?"

The doctor had come to an agreement with her gelding; one that didn't involve a trip to the boneyard, apparently. She was leading the horse back to them. "Yeah, we're finished. Can we just cross the damned bridge now?"

He boosted Katie into the saddle, but thought better of following her. Instead, he pointed to the bridge, and the other side of the river. "Your lead, doctor."

She nodded and led them across. The horse hooves thumped on the wood, the bridge humming and alive with sounds of the river and the travellers.

Here's an excerpt from my soon to be released next novel, The Boyar's Curse. This is the opening to Chapter 10.

So here's the setup. A group of stone spirits, seven of them, have had been somewhat unfortunate in their choice of trail through the sun-lit world. They may be a little out of practice walking the earth's surface.

In fact, they've been more than unfortunate. They've stumbled across Baba Yaga, and she's named the spirits, forcing them into a set of obsequious forms she believes she can dominate...

Chapter 10: She's THE Crone

She didn't start out that way, of course. She chose that path, on purpose and with malice aforethought. The throwby of Woden had no illusions of what deciding to be the witch of witches, the progenitor of myth and story and the insults of the ignorant on countless generations of her daughters would mean.

And she did it anyway. The feelings of mortals had no meaning for her. The wound it tore in her father's heart to see his most beautiful of human daughters transform to her chosen form paid for all of the ill-times both of them foresaw.

She took his legacy, foresight and eternal beauty of youth, exchanged it for the wisdom of age and time's gift, experience, and walked away from the concerns of the gods.

Not that she could get away from her father's gifts so easily. The sight came to her in its own time. She could almost hear his laughter when mirrors flickered, or the winds shifted, and the future made itself known to her.

Then there were the days and weeks and years where she found the crone's face exchanged for the form of her youth. Staring into the mirror during those times tortured her.

Not for what she had given up; but for the fact that no choice was ever done and finished. The hangover of the gods, it seems, takes more than a few lifetimes to recover from.

She'd sought time and space of her own, here in the mountains. The humans were revolting, in presence and demeanor, and she wanted none of their petty squabbling. It interfered with her quests.

That her father's spirit had invested the valley below was something she really didn't want to contemplate. There were precious few places left in the world for spirits and those who followed them. She'd resigned herself to the fact that she was forced to share this one.

The stone-spirits were another matter, especially when they invaded her territory. "It would have been bad enough for the makers, the dwarves, to come here." The thieves, the kobolds, were too much altogether.

She pushed through the pine boughs into the false darkness of the hidden grove in evening. The sky above, what little the mountain allowed, was lit, but here in the stone pockets, the sun had taken its leave.

She moved through the shadow-time, a bent and warped huntress sniffing after her prey.

The kobolds were trapped by indecision. Long had it been, since they'd been forced into a form not of their choosing. "It's ignoble, is what it is," one of them muttered.

They crouched, just two turns of the stream from the meadow, whispering their complaints. And worrying about what was coming their way. They couldn't bring themselves to go back to the meadow, the man might have looked old, but he'd had no problem killing a troll. Seven of them should have been able to defeat him.

But no one of them could convince any of the others to risk the lives they would lose in the effort. "But full attack, and we'd win, right?"

"Maybe. But how many do we lose, three, four? Gonna volunteer for that, are you?"

"What about her, then? We'll lose all of us to her."

"Only if she gets angry," the one who'd become leader finished. "Now shut the hell up, she's coming."

They all felt her. They had been shadows, darkness amongst the stones, and they welcomed the false night. But a cold wind rose, just for them, trapping them further in their squat twisted horribly mortal bodies, three on one side of the stream and four on another. Her mind and her will reached them in their convocation, to impose her order over theirs.

"Stay, fools. You've made your way into my home. Now," and she entered from around the turn, "tell me what business brings you here." She stood there, cloaked and hooded and waiting for an answer.

The seven fell to squabbling. None of them wanted to be the one to accept responsibility in front of the witch. When the fighting settled, one of them, not the previous leader, was pushed out front to stand before the Crone.

"Ah, well, it's like this. There's this child, and she's picked up this troll's amulet, and she invested it..." He searched for a better way to explain. Or maybe a different tack, now that he realized what he'd just told Baba Yaga.

In spite of herself, the creature's story intrigued her. "And you bunch think you can steal a bit of new magic for yourselves. Interesting."

She walked through the sorry little convocation, until she was well past and could let her senses reach the outside. The child was there, just a few yards away, with something of almost-power quiet and nestled close to her heart. It didn't have true meaning, not as the witch understood such things, not yet.

And, she knew, the way of things meant the amulet would most likely never have any real power. But, then again, it might. Someday. And the child was a girl...

She was protected. The woman who accompanied her was mindful, with an intriguing story. The man was nobody, even carrying that false troll's curse didn't make him anything more than an appendix.

Even the mule had a more interesting story than that.

The smell of humans nauseated her, even more than the fresh-made kobolds behind her. "It'll take more than a single bath in a mountain stream to wash that stink from their ignorant hides." Baba Yaga turned back to the head of the kobolds.

"You're awfully confidant in your ability to keep the child alive. Humans aren't well known for their ability to survive the depths."

The kobold elected to face her twisted himself further to give his fellows the evil eye. Then, grudgingly, he turned back to the Crone. "Why would we want the child? It's the amulet that matters." He thought maybe he'd found an answer for the witch; he was proud of outwitting her.

For a second or two.

"You poor, stupid little thing. No wonder you're all thieves, and not makers, like your cousins." She shook her head while looking for a spot to sit down.

The kobold hesitated, then stepped, slowly, to join the witch where she rested. He didn't presume to sit with her, he just settled where he could be close enough to continue the conversation.

The others tried to follow, but they were still held trapped in their place by Baba Yaga's will. She didn't need that much of an audience.

"Now, listen," she began. "Do you want true power, from that amulet? Or do you just want the possibility of it?" She felt the hunger from the kobold, and its echo in the six behind him.

He grimaced, a mass of wrinkles coming together across his face in confusion. "The thing is magic, we can taste it." The others mumbled their agreement; their hunger swelled, to the point that Baba Yaga could almost share their taste. It was a metallic thing, a glimpse of the endless search for silver, gold, jewel stones, the earth's hidden treasure that drove the stone-spirits' jealousy.

She put her hands up until the chorus died away. "But it's not magic. Not yet."

Another chorus, of confusion, rang up. The six behind struggled against her will, managing to swat and punch each other as they tried to shift blame and deny having ever thought the amulet was worth anything to begin with.

The lone outcast kneeled down, defeated, in front of the Crone. "But I can feel it. What's wrong with me, then, that thing's real and just there waiting for the picking?"

She giggled. If the kobolds had had human instincts, the sound would have unnerved them, given how incongruous it was. "There's nothing wrong with you. You just haven't had to work in a very long time. You're out of practice."

Baba Yaga explained, as she would teach a child, the difference between possibility and actuality. "The power doesn't just exist in a thing like that amulet. It needs to be built, shaped, and imposed. If you took that necklace now, all you'd have was a metal trinket."

She stopped when the kobolds fell to babbling. White gold might have been a trinket to her, but to them it was still a taste to feed the long underground nights.

"Fine, you'd nibble on the thing, it would be gone in a minute, and then what?" She shook her head at the blank faces that met her. "No, no, no. Idiots. What do you eat tomorrow, if you have no food today?"

She felt the realization dawn on them, finally. For once, they didn't fight about it. The hunger rose up again to drown all other instincts.

"I guess I forgot, spirits mostly don't just think, do they?" she reminded herself. "You're a bundle of instincts tangled up and thrown up here for me to deal with. Ah, well, it's a living."

"But, ma'am," and the leader bowed his head to acknowledge her mastery. "What would be the difference, if we didn't just take the amulet? If you don't mind me asking, I mean?"

'Ah,' she thought. 'I have them.' Of all things, she enjoyed most of all negotiating with the spirit-folk. These few may not have been all that sophisticated.

But then, she did have to keep her hand in. A little practice was a good thing. And these were definitely beasts of little practice.

She reminded herself that the job was only half-done. "You've heard tell of things of power. Mjolnir. Gungnir. Perun's axe." With each name, the stones around them shimmered and returned whispers. The seven kobolds stiffened in response.

If they hungered after metal, this was something else altogether. It was one thing to be jealous of the Earth's creations. The works of their dwarven cousins were things beyond their ability to covet. The names of the mighty drove the kobolds past desire through to the ecstatic agony of the fallen.

She feasted on despair, rolling waves of it beating counterpoint as the echoes of the names faded away. When they were aware, again, she gave them that most deadly of things.

Hope.

"That amulet, that tiny little spear of white-gold dangling from the tangled fears of a troll? With a little luck, the seven of you could, perhaps..."

She stifled a laugh; they were leaning over like sunflowers to the dawn, hanging on the pause in her speech.

"You could be the ones to name it. You could well be the ones to name a new power in this world. One that may yet outlast us all."

She paused there, expecting them to fall completely into her hands.

Disappointment comes to all, though. She felt distrust move through them, starting with the leader and working one by one through the others.

He turned to look at his fellows, then back to her, eyes narrowed while he calculated the balance of equity. "You're not known for sharing such things as knowledge. Not with us, not with anyone."

Her reputation had its good points. But it had its bad points, too. She wondered then if she'd gone too far, pushed them too hard. These weren't wolverines fattening up for the winter.

Her mind racing, she tried to find another handle to lever her new friends to her bidding. "Well, so far I haven't told you anything you wouldn't have learned yourselves."

She didn't pause to let them remember the beginning of the conversation. "So, let's talk about the concept of fair exchange of services."

Try as she might, the witch had already lost her advantage over the kobolds. Once brought forward, the mistrust stayed with them. It didn't help at all that Baba Yaga never offered them anything in particular in exchange for working for her.

In the end, it came down to an impasse; the seven malformed spirits trapped by her will, but unwilling to aquiesce to her demands. The witch refusing to offer anything of importance in exchange for the girl.

They argued through the night. Not that the kobolds had any choice. In the end, when all heard the music of dawn thrumming across the rockface, it was the kobold's accidental leader who slipped through a minor fault in the web of logic she'd so patiently woven for their prison.

"The girl won't be doing many deeds, trapped in this valley. No deeds, no magic, and we starve for decades for nothing."

It hung there, the little realization. The flaw in the plan, at least as she'd presented it to the thieves. Without a suitable tale to tell, the amulet was nothing more than a pretty bauble.

"You're looking to take her from us," he said. It took him most of the night, but he'd worked out just what the witch was hiding. "We do the work, we take the risk, you leave us with a bit of metal and trapped here in the day-world while you've got the girl and the story that might have been."

He stepped back; the other six followed suit. She'd missed the first rule for negotiating with spirits.

Honesty.

Her control was broken. The lightening sky above told them all how little time there was left for her to recover some dignity, at least. "When you do steal the girl, where will you hide? There's nowhere in this valley, in this world, where I cannot find her." She stood full height and wreathed in fury, her hood thrown back to let them stare at the shock of white hair and madness revenant.

The leader bowed, one more time, mocking salute as flesh became shadow once more. Seven shadows left that place and Baba Yaga gnashing her teeth in fury. "We'll just have to try our hands at a little kidnapping, lady. I think there are more hiding places in this world than you admit to."

The Crone stood once more alone in the false dawn. Long had it been since she'd failed to bring a spirit to heel. She remembered how much she hated the feeling of defeat. Turning back to her pine-woven hut was almost more than she could bear.

But she did. There was time yet to prepare for the daytime visitors sure to come. If the humans were more amenable to manipulation, there might yet be a chance to recover the night's work.

Notes in the middle of a conference, i.e. what can I actually do while waiting for the rubber chicken and the a.v. issues to be resolved for the speakers...

... and never underestimate the power of boredom. I almost didn't bring my laptop with me, I figured there was no way on earth I'd be getting any writing done today. Too quiet, too sleepy, the call of the nap in the seminar chair...

And then I fired up the laptop, just to read what I've done so far on Peace Offer (Peace Offering? I've got one thing in the file, another thing that I've written here, I'm not sure yet and it's not enough of a difference to nail down until I'm finished and going on to the nuts and bolts of it.) and so I ended up putting in another 1500 words or so.

The story's up to about 18000 words total, and taking the time to read back through the whole thing at once helped me, as it usually does. I forget the heavy lifting, the days the words dragged and the days when I wondered how badly I was just screwing everything up, and just wind myself in the flow of it.

It did confirm to me that I'd reached the right point, what I talked about yesterday with the change/intro of new characters. One of the characters I've already introduced shows a different face to everyone he interacts with. The two new characters have their own stories, and their own path, and where it intersects here, their view of the others matters a great deal. I'm going to very interested in finding out just where they're going, how they get there, and what they see of the others as they go.

I started to call this a lost day, but it wasn't. I did end up having another one of those days where no fiction writing got done, simply because of the necessity of the day gig. And tomorrow's no better, I have an all day conference that, with drive time, I know better than to expect anything else.

That's the life, but I wouldn't call it a lost day. It's just the way it works out some days, that's all.

That being said, I do have the blurb for my next novel to put up below...

****

Yesterday, a semi-retired professor with a hobby in the curious and the odd
discovers something he didn't expect at all. Something he'd given up hoping
for a lifetime ago. 

A thousand years ago, an old warrior, his adopted daughter, and their friend
from the other side of the world run for their lives. They are hunted, and
the only place to hide is the last remaining bastion of the old gods, those
whose time is running out.

How are they all connected?

This is the story of The Boyar's Curse...

This was a day where heavy lifting was needed for writing. In some abstract sense, putting in my words on the work in progress didn't take much difference in time compared to other days, but it sure felt like I was working at it more than usual.

Fun, sure. But slow.

and then on the drive home, I realized what may be hiding in plain view, at least from the reference of the story itself. Structurally, there's a character, and a new point of view, who has not yet appeared. But is definitely there, waiting.

I'm not sure yet who she is, or which of the characters I've been tracking to this point she's most likely to tangle with. That's tomorrow's part of the story, or at least how she steps onto the stage.

And so that's that for That First Gig. All in all, I'm happy with it. Unlike with my Opening Bid story from a couple months ago, this one I went into with malice aforethought; meaning, I knew at least some idea of what I was getting into.

I didn't really have an idea about where the story was going at all. That's the fun part, I just dove into it and waited to see how it went. There were a couple of things that I sort of expected to happen that didn't, a couple surprises along the way.

And I had fun doing it the whole way. Hopefully, so did you. I'm not sure yet when I'll do it again, right now my brain wants to focus on the next book to go out to the online retailers, The Boyar's Curse. I've got the cover and the back copy, I'm in the middle of formatting.

So at least for the next few nights I'll work my way through that process, and I'll put up the bits and pieces as I go. I've got a couple of chapters in the book that should work pretty well as excerpts, so I'm going to experiment with doing that, as well.

This has been a lost weekend, so no writing on either That First Gig or my main work in progress, Peace Offering.

Not anything major, no family issues or anything like. Simply house stuff, plumbing issues and cleaning the outside of the house of some minor mildew on the north (most shadowed) part of the exterior.

Basically, just one thing after another. The one that really ate up my writing time was cleaning the outside of the house. I use a soft brush on an extension pole, bleach and soapy water, because I prefer that over a power washer. Either way, my wrists let me know that I had pushed it a little too far, and since my time at the keyboard for the day gig is what pays my bills, writing had to take a short shrift this weekend.

And yeah, under the circumstances, if you wanted to know whether or not I was writing That First Gig in real time, yes I am. It's not an auto post, or pre-written in any way. This is just one of those times where I came off the wire into the net below.

Fortunately, I think I'll be able to get through the rest of the household issues tomorrow, and back to a normal schedul in a day or two.

A busy day, productive on a variety of fronts, both day gig and writing. I've got the next part for That First Gig ready to go in the next post. I also got through the next section of copyedits on The Boyar's Curse. We'll see how much I get through tonight, there's rumors of computer trouble waiting for me to work on at home.

On the new fiction side, I'm up to about 10800 words on Peace Offering today, and that one keeps surprising me every day. Which is most definitely a good thing.

This was another one of those Mondays, the kind where the morning disappeared
due to administrivia at the day gig. This was the kind that went "head off
to deal with parking for a couple hours first thing I get there". Which is
what it is, but in this case I was wondering how much of my writing day I'd
lose in the bargain.

Just from the disruption, really. I'll be the first to admit that, however
much I might think and hope that my habits have been well-built, there are
times when the mind throws it off and refuses to cooperate.

And my first writing pass on Peace Offering looked, felt like it was gonna
be one of those days. It was to the point where I was contemplating how
many words I'd have to ditch tomorrow.

But the alchemy of the work took over, and I looked up at the end of my last
writing pass (at this point, I tend to work in small chunks throughout the
day, think of it as taking my breaks by pouring out fiction) and I'd put in
another 1300 words to get up to about 9800 total on the project so far.

Huh. And then I got the next passage of That First Gig, part 5 is coming as
the next post after this one. So, not too shabby of a Monday after all.

Didn't get much of anything done on the copyedits for The Boyar's Curse, so
that's my week ahead of me on that front.

A quiet Sunday, as well. I could get used to this idea of having a couple days where I get to just be. Pick up the laptop and work, sweep, play with the dogs or cats, laundry.

Not have to get in the car and go someplace. Hey, I love volunteering for my daughter's extra stuff, and I'm looking forward to it again this summer and fall. The problem is dragging my butt home from work, and *then* having a weekend where I never quite feel like I can catch up to zero.

Ah, well, that's just life at the moment. I do enjoy it. Especially when I can still get my words in. Today, I got Peace Offering up to about 8400 words, and I'm having fun doing it.

And I got the next part for That First Gig written, it's the next post as always. I didn't get through the next stage of copyedits on The Boyar's Curse, but two out of three ain't bad, and I'll take it.

Saturday. Saturday, Saturday! I got another 1100 words or so on Peace Offering,
a little copyediting on the next book to go up, The Boyar's Curse, and I got
the next chapter in That First Gig ready to go for the next post.

Not too shabby if I do say so myself. Think I'll go grab a coke and see what
I think about cleaning up the kitchen ahead of dinner. Later!

So, the next part of That First Gig will be posted as the next post.

Otherwise, a standard Friday, I'm up to about 6100 words on Peace Offering,
and it's still moving along. Since I've had mostly shorter stories over the
past couple months, I was wondering how the transition to a longer work would
feel. Whether I'd stumble over it, or if it would feel like I'm padding
something out just because I jumped into it "knowing" this one was a novel
length idea. But no, the rhythm is there.

Practice, I guess. Learning the ropes, how to write into the dark, as Dean
Smith would have it. It's not far from the way I started, so when I first
read him talk about it, I could glimpse the idea as a real thing, not just
something another writer was saying as some kind of abstract practice I
couldn't keep up with.

Now it's just... doing it. Having fun, and embracing that I when I sit down
here at the keyboard, even just for a few minutes at a time,
that's when the fun really begins.

it seems I might have been bit by the silly bug (see next post). I don't have
a clue, but this story started gnawing at me yesterday, and here we are.

In the other work, Peace Offering, the main daily story in progress is up to
about 5100 words today. So yeah, I'm apparently writing two at once. Life's
little blessings? I'd say so, since I'm having fun with both of 'em.

Good thing is, I think that That First Gig is going to be reasonably short.

Then again, I may have just cursed myself...

Nothing major to report today, other than that yesterday fell down a rabbit hole. Little things, quarterly tax stuff mostly, but otherwise an evening devoured by domesticity of the fiscal sort.

By the time I realized I hadn't posted anything, it was four in the morning and the alarm clock was threatening. So, a skipped day on the blog end of things, but not for lack of trying.

The good part, from my point of view, is that the story in progress, well, progressed, today and yesterday. Peace Offering is up to about 3900 words tonight. It's a little bit uphill at the moment. I think that's a voice thing; each story ahs its own rhythms and voice. Especially at the beginning of a longer work, where I am in my learning, a lot of my time at the keyboard initially is listening for it.

Where is this one going? is the standard question.

How? is the one I'm talking about. If there's an explicit narrator, who's she? Can I trust her? That's the explicit way voice shows up for me, just like listening to a conversation and hearing the accents, the word choice, how someone posits themselves.

No explicit narrator, and it's the same business, just more subtle. Does the point of view let each character through? Zoom up, pull back, maybe the story wants to be intimate here.

For all I know, I'm spouting gibberish. But it works for me. Especially down the road, if I spend the time up front, as the story develops, the rhythm and voice of it will evolve, but with the throughline that the story needs to make a whole, and it'll be under my fingers. At least, if I'm doing my part of the job right, and listening to what this particular story needs in order to be told.

Mondays, a day for cursing and gnashing of teeth. Ah, how we hate thee! To have to roll out of bed, blinking at the miserable condition of having to go to work.

Ok, so I might be exaggerating a bit. Or a lot, it really wasn't that bad, just long. 'twas always thus.

I did get writing done, Peace Offering is up to about 1700 words, so a good start for me so far. One of the things that made today longer was that I had a crisis of faith, as it were, this morning about the writing. I felt lower than a dog, what on earth am I doing this for, dragging myself through this I'm crap at writing why torture myself.

It passed. They're always short term thoughts. That doesn't mean I don't feel them, but they're predictable, too. It's that voice in my head that doesn't want to succeed, or rather, would rather fail by not trying than finish and face rejection.

And one thing I'm discovering is that there's a rhythm to it. Every story, certainly every longer work, I have my tests to pass. With the story, the "hey where is this going" moments. And with myself, the "hey are you sure you want to do this?" moments. From what I can tell, these thoughts are a pretty regular part of the process for a lot of artists and writers.

Maybe we have to slay our demons every time?

So be it. The armor's a little rusty, and there are many times I'm afraid the sword's a pasta noodle, but screw it. Let's buckle up, ride out, and clash at arms again...

I did end up writing the opening to Peace Offering today. I won't say I got as far as I might have wanted, but that's ok. When I'm in the middle of a project, at this point in my understanding of the gig, a little, even just a couple hundred words every day, is a whole lot better than nothing.

It doesn't seem like it would, when I've just thought in terms of word counts alone. The word counts are important, don't get me wrong. They're the milestones, the concrete steps along the way.

But on the days when you can't even because of life? Hey, that fifteen minutes sitting down and putting your mind in the right place is a lifesaver.

Another brief post, and no story writing today. Not because I didn't want to, but this was a day generally inconducive to that. It was a road trip day, to visit family who were throwing a bit of a spring shindig.

So, get up early, drive three hours, eat lunch, visit, get to see everybody, then get back on the road and head back again to be back for the dogs and cats.

Not too bad, really. At one time, we'd have spent the night, but the four legged members of the family have their time needs as well.

That's the life sometimes. I am glad that we got to visit and it not be one of the assortment of tragic reasons.

The way I describe my family is that, we're not a big family, we just all happen to have stayed close. I may have said that before, the detail is that I was the fifth generation when I was born, my great-great grandparents were still alive, though they passed within a year or so after I was born. When my daughter was born, on the same side she was also part of the fifth generation, she was the third of that generation, and my great grandmother lived until our daughter was about 13 or so, and there a handful more added.

The family's getting larger now, but at least for my generation and older we're all still pretty close. By the time my daughter gets to my age, they won't be, simply because there are now so many of them, but it's still pretty remarkable to me that we made it so long. There's been a few splintering off events, but otherwise the group of us still manage to all get together in a single house without any trouble at all. It's a pretty interesting experience.

Interesting, but not quiet at all. And definitely not quiet enough to write. Ce la vie.

I had an odd moment today. Well, not all that odd, except for how I realized it as it was happening.

So, one of my habits is to take a walk after lunch. It's a chance to get out of the office and away from the job, since I tend to eat at my desk. It's also a chance to get a view of things happening in the area around the day job location. There's enough traffic and locals that I can get in a bit of people watching.

There's a fair bit of constuction in the area, as well.

That's sort of important. Because I'm in between stories, having just finished A Wolf in Taos Valley, and I'd given myself a day or two just to let the mind run in neutral for a bit.

Which is a natural time for me to daydream. I don't know for sure, but I have at least some inkling that writers are inveterate daydreamers, just ones that have that peculiar jones to sit down and write it down for others to read. Up to this point, everything's perfectly normal.

What changed today for me was that instead of just a simple daydream kicked off by the construction work I saw on yesterday's lunch walk, I realized about ten minutes or so into my walk that I was writing/narrating a what if/story setup in my head. And that I was about a thousand words or so into that story when it clicked in for me that I was doing it.

(It's a bruiser; I think Peace Offering for a title? That seems like it might change but I don't know for sure. I also know right off the bat it's a novel. Then again, I like the title, and given the story start I have no idea at all what sort of offering might be on offer. I'm gonna have fun finding out. ;)

The odd part wasn't that I was writing the story in my head. I've done that, but usually it's on purpose. This is the first time that my subconscious just took over like that without directed purpose.

Huh. One thing's for sure. I know what I'm gonna be starting work on tomorrow...

I finished the manuscript for A Wolf in Taos Valley today, it came in at just over 27000 words, so it's solidly into the novella category. I was wondering there for a while if it was going to end up heading into the novel range, even though I hadn't really thought at the beginning that it was likely to, but then when I got to around the 25000 word mark or so, the ending and the setup for it came out naturally.

I'm not quite sure of the queue for sending it out to the world. I know I have two longer works ahead of it, so maybe June? That sounds right, but there may be another that I'm forgetting.

That sounds weird, but all it really means is that I don't have my directories and lists in front of me here, and don't feel like hunting for them at the moment. I know I've got a good lineup ahead of me, and regular production for most of the next year in terms of putting up stories for sale. That's the important part at the moment.

Onward and upward, as the commercial has it...

This evening, for me, is given over to observation and reflection, a little bit of quiet time to think and meditate on the streams of time and things that might have been.

It's been a long day. Good, but long. Tonight was a performance night for the high school band, they're all getting ready for the spring competition series. So this was a chance for the bands to run through their competition pieces in a dress rehearsal.

So we went to support our daughter, and to sit through all of the other bands in the school, as well. Basically, a chance for us and her to hear the upperclassmen and see what the upper level bands are up to. Maybe slip in a little challenge motivation, as well. Who knows, it can't hurt. Besides, they're good enough to make for a nice evening.

That's about all for this evening, brain done time to go to bed.

When you swing on a tether
  watch your feet;
  tripping on the strings
  is the puppet's greatest
  fear.

Pump energy through the thing
  make it swing
  make it dance.
  How much energy do you
  need?

Enough to make water flow uphill.
  Pump it hard.
  Pump it fast.
  It'll go if you just...
  wish.

And work like hell; hard enough
  to make water
  run uphill.
  That's how hard.
  But.

Don't sweat it. The web is not
  of your design.
  That said,
  the puppeteer never quite
  believes.

Not when the puppet takes the
  time the place the
  awareness to a new
  level, beyond that which was
  known.

Who's caught who, now there's
  the rub. Don't matter,
  break the diaphonous
  and run free.
  Clean.

Fermi/Channel Markers (3): What's the point?

Nothing in particular, except for trying to get a sense of scale. One of the hard things is to set a scale, some idea of an outside measure. That's why the National Institute of Standards (and Technology now) exists (in the U.S., there are other national agencies and international agencies all coordinating to do the same thing), to say "here's a pound" or "here's a foot" or gallon or whatever.

A kilogram is famously a piece of metal sitting in a safe in France. A meter, similarly, though they're moving to define meters in other ways that are independent of what happens to the reference.

Gold here isn't magic. It's just that prior to Nixon, the dollar was defined by statute (20 dollars to the ounce of gold before FDR, 35 thereafter) so that's the most convenient method in this case. Plus, while gold has its industrial uses, it's remained otherwise primarily a jewelry or collector's metal since the move to free floating currencies.

That explains the reasoning for the measures, and trust me, they're crude. Economists will argue endlessly about how different ways of measuring these things are better. My purpose here though is to just do my best to provide a definition that's not circular, and that's a useful rule of thumb, nothing more.

(Circular? The meaning of a dollar is a step function in time; a definition of inflation, no matter what it is, has to be calibrated against some manner of independent control, otherwise there's no way generally to verify the measuring stick. Just like in a lab you use external standards to calibrate your test methods before you use them.)

But that's just the nuts and bolts of it, why do it at all?

Things like the "hey kid, here's a nickle?", the little markers in older fiction works that the original authors didn't have to think about. If I give my daughter five bucks for something these days, I know she'll either have to buy an e-book with it, or wait until she's got another five bucks to buy a paper book, it having been since I was a kid since even mass market paperbacks were under 5 bucks per copy.

So if I write a story set just after WWII, say, and I'm thinking about how the kids then lived, if their dad's driving a used, pre-war chevy that he's keeping going with spit and bailing wire, that tells me one thing. If he's moving the family to the suburbs and buying a new Bel-Air a few years later, that tells me something else.

Or maybe I'm writing a story set a hundred years in the future, and the kids then are getting a couple bucks for re-organizing an old hard drive so the new computers can read it. What does that tell me? Maybe the dollar's been re-done again, with new meaning and new values. Why? What would have happened between now and then, and how would it have rippled through to the broader world?