Tonight, at least, I managed to throw words at both Mirror’s Gate and Bone Walker, though, so I’m calling that a win! Still in Chapter 2 on the one and Chapter 11 on the other, but between ‘em I got roughly 500 words tonight. So I call that a win!

Mirror’s Gate:
Written tonight: 267
Chapter 2 total: 2,231
Mirror’s Gate total (first draft): 6,014

Bone Walker:
Written tonight: 293
Chapter 11 total: 682
Bone Walker total (first draft): 30,683

It all means no real major progress in any of it, but at least there was small pointer advancement! We’ll see what I can do today.

Written on Mirror’s Gate, Chapter 2: 157
Written on Bone Walker, Chapter 11: 174
Written on Shards of Recollection, Chapter 1: 150
Written on Child of Ocean, Child of Stars: 26
Written on Shadow of the Rook: 30
Written on Untitled story about Elizabeth, psychic chick of size, and Ross, brother of a dead Warder: 34
Total words written yesterday: 571

I explained to Dara that I needed to get Christopher and Kendis from her house in Sand Point over to the East Side, and that time is of the essence for reasons on which I shall not elucidate, because of spoilers. She wryly suggested that in the Faerie Blood universe, maybe we do actually have the Mosquito Fleet of boats on Lake Washington, or that I could make a faerie/ferry pun of some sort, which might bear investigation later if certain long-term plans come to fruition for the future of these characters. More immediately, though, the best solution seemed to be just have them take Millie’s car.

Those of you who’ve read Faerie Blood may note that at no point in that book did I ever mention that Millicent Merriweather actually owned a vehicle. So when I mulled what sort of vehicle she might drive, Dara promptly started throwing me all sorts of amusing suggestions about cars for a woman of her age and history. As a result, I have decided that Millie has a 1982 brown Volvo, which used to belong to her husband and which she now drives as little as possible because 1) a Warder should walk her city’s streets, not drive them, 2) the car makes her miss her husband, and 3) driving is annoying in general. Especially in Seattle.

This will explain why the hell Kendis has spent the last two months in Millie’s company and never realized she had a car at all. It will also give me an excuse to have her and Christopher get into her car and take enough of a moment to double-take over how wait, what, Millie listens to Nirvana?

I’m tellin’ ya, Millie just keeps unfolding like a flower. Also, character brainstorming with your spouse rocks.

Before I go any further, though, I think I’m going to have to take a few tomorrow and update the story’s outline. I need to flesh out some idea of what the heck happens next.

Written tonight: 683
Chapter 10 total: 3,080
Bone Walker total (first draft): 30,001

Meanwhile, Joely Sue Burkhart’s sister event of Maynowrimo proceeds apace. My goal for it is to hit 200 words a day on Bone Walker, minimum. I’ve skipped a day or two, but the math works out nicely still to have me on track! As of tonight’s writing, which was 504 words, I’m just over the 29K mark and 30K should be breached this week.

Things discovered in the process of writing Chapter 10: Christopher’s middle name is Michael, Jude’s middle name is Alicia, and Warders can find anybody who lives in their city. And I do mean anybody, if they look hard enough. Especially magically. Good to know!

Gosh, May’s feeling nice and productive so far. I’m doing pretty well hitting my old daily goal of about 500 words a day! Let’s see if I can keep that up.

And, well, have a snippet! I could see this being the scene snippet that shows up at the beginning of paperbacks, I think.

In the meantime, I rubbed the cloth over Elessir’s hot face and brow. The attention seemed to help; his shivers eased, and his voice gained a little strength as he murmured something in syllables I didn’t know, but which needed no great stretch of imagination for me to peg them as the speech of Faerie. “Alokhiu. Queen turned her into one.” Before any of us could ask, he slit open one eye and peered groggily up at me. “It means ‘bone walker’… more or less.”

Neither Christopher nor Millie spoke, maybe because Elessir was focused on me. Joy. So I said, shoving the worry modulating into a higher and shriller pitch into the back of my mind, “You’re going to have to tell me what that is.”

“It’s hunger, Miss Thompson. For magic. For flesh. For life.”

The worry in me exploded into full-blown dread. I thought of every monster I’d ever seen in a horror movie, any creature that fed upon the living: zombies, succubi, vampires, you name it. None of those were real–or if they were, Millie hadn’t clued me in yet. But there was no mistaking the reality of Elessir’s hoarse words. There was no artifice here, no mockery. And it scared the hell out of me. I froze even as I cradled him, and had to force my next words out through a fear-locked throat.

“And this is what’s riding around in Jude now?”

He sagged in my arms, spent, though his gaze never left my face. “I’m sorry,” he said.

Then he fainted, leaving two shocked Warders and me with his limp form–and an afternoon that had gotten much, much worse.

Meanwhile, tonight’s Maynowrimo performance was not quite as awesome as yesterday’s. But I did throw words nonetheless at three total books!

Bone Walker: 238 words into Chapter 10, just enough to push me up over the 27K mark for the book. 30K is possibly doable by the end of the week.

Shadow of the Rook: 277 words into Chapter 3. A Faanshi chapter, the first in this story so far. And now I’m all “oh RIGHT Faanshi and Julian and Kestar! I really like these characters! And their story isn’t done yet either!” Shadow is hovering around 14K at the moment.

Mirror’s Gate: Only 79 words here, on Chapter 2. Mostly I was too distracted by the other two books, even though I’d also opened this file. Book’s now around 4K.

All told that’s 594 words, which is still above my old quota of 500 a day, so it’s all good!

P.S. I picked up a couple new followers on Twitter today, so if you folks clicked through to see this post, hi there! Hope you’ll hang around for more.

I’m sure it’d be weirder if it were a big-time physical face to face type convention, but you know what? A virtual convention is still pretty damned awesome. And tomorrow–okay, today, since it’s after midnight now and that does technically make it today–I will be participating in the awesome! I’m in on the Urban Fantasy/Paranormal Fiction panel at 3pm Pacific, 6pm Eastern, along with several of my fellow Drollerie authors and Spellbent author Lucy Snyder! Come by and say hi and listen in. Details on how can be found over at CoyoteCon’s site.

Meanwhile, I’ve been having great fun participating in the CoyoteCon word wars. Like those run by , they’ve been doing wonders at making me get used to throwing words out onto the page on a regular basis again. Today I was feeling particularly ambitious, and managed to add words to not one, not two, not three, but FOUR of the works in progress! Go me!

Bone Walker now stands at nine complete chapters, and those of you who are fond of Elessir may find yourselves going WHA WHA WHA? at the reveal about him I drop at the end of Chapter 9. Muaha. No, I won’t be posting it.

Mirror’s Gate started Chapter 2 as Yevanya reacts–badly–to seeing someone she thinks is her dead husband Aleksandr, and over in Shadow of the Rook‘s shiny new Chapter 3, Faanshi reacts to realizing OH HEY she did something severely, hugely game-changing, about which I will not be elaborating because it’s spoiler-rific for the end of Lament of the Dove. Trust me on that ‘un.

And, I threw another hundred words or so into Shards of Recollection, which is still sitting in Chapter 1, but every little bit of progress counts!

All in all? This has been a good day.

For a third, and this is probably the most important difference, I’ve got more characters in play here and therefore more ensemble cast fun going on. Chapter 8′s the second big scene involving most of the cast–and it’s a lot more tense, because I’ve got both Melisanda and Elessir on hand. Tonight, I’m finding this is also an opportunity for Kendis to establish a bit of dominance that she doesn’t normally have around Millicent, given that Millie’s usually the one in charge. But these are the Sidhe Ken’s dealing with–and they’re going to look to her first. Especially Elessir. Of course, Kendis ain’t terribly thrilled about this:

The tension that had vanished from the room ratcheted right back up again, this time with an even more hostile bite to it than Melisanda had provoked–for this time, the Seelie was not only part of the reaction, she was its furious heart. She surged forward from her place by the front door, past both of the Warders and Jake, and only my outthrust hand kept her from going for Elessir’s naked throat. “I pledged to obey my Queen,” she snarled, “and make amends for my trespasses. But that does not include consorting with this treacherous worm!”

Something close to Elessir’s devilish grin slid across his mouth, but there was no mirth in it, and it didn’t reach his eyes. “Ah’m jes’ thrilled to death to see you again too, darlin’,” he rasped. After many hours of sleep he was no longer the deathly white shade he’d been before, but this wasn’t saying much; his voice was weak, and he was still haggard, disheveled, and looking far too pitiful for my comfort.

Which, no doubt, was why I clocked him across the jaw.

Yeah. That’ll do nicely.

Written tonight: 543
Chapter 8 total: 2,058
Bone Walker total (first draft): 23,096

This means Bone Walker has now passed the 20K mark. And now I need to think about what the hell is going to happen in Chapter 8.

Written tonight: 1,209
Chapter 7 total: 4,309
Bone Walker total (first draft): 21,038