and I have promises to keep...

I've been writing like mad. It's not good writing, but then, only the most elite of the mad write worth a damn. I was considering posting some of the writing, for brutalization review by my peers, but I couldn't face the embarassed morning after.

So, I've been writing that damned love story. Hell, say it, it's trying to be a romance novel, the very thought of which makes me want to take long, scalding showers until I can finally feel clean again (NOTE: Not long cold showers. Not long warm showers, suds sliding down satiny skin and tracing the gentle curves of exposed flesh. LONG COOTIE-FREE SCALDING SHOWERS. WITH DISINFECTANT.)

Ahem. I digress.

I mentioned in a recent post that the larger quest plot couldn't carry it's own weight and fell off the end of the story. The larger plot involved dragons, centrally. When I dropped the dragons out of the story I started musing about dropping them out of the world (a fantasy world without dragons? Say it ain't so!). I could always keep them around in the form of historical legends - real creatures now extinct. Which brings me to this:

I promise that if I decide to have dragons in Calenthe as extinct and/or legendary beings, I will NOT have them revived in the course of the stories. An underprivledged-but-plucky orphan will NOT find and hatch the last dragon egg. Royalty-in-distress will NOT find their military prayers answered by wings from above. Dragons will NOT once more roam the earth and sky after showers of meteors herald the end-times/time-of-plenty in accordance with the prophecy.

If they're alive'n'kickin, all well and good. But the reappearance thing has been done to death.

Any questions?

I'm tagging this with "I promise...", and I'm going to go back and mark similar such dangerous statements in my LJ, so you guys can find all the times I say "Shoot me if I ever start..." and do so.

Last and certainly least, read this Onion article. I rescind my admission of guilt. I can't be writing a romance novel, because I can't use the words "turgid*" or "nubile" with a straight face.

Oh, also 'cause it has a plot.

*The word "turgid" always makes me think of potatoes. I could explain, but you'd probably rather I not.

More writing for the hanger queen

The hanger queen is the non-functioning airplane one keeps around to scavange parts from.

Since switching from Elyvaer's viewpoint to Marik's, things have really clicked. The story works much better as a story, and I seem able to keep Marik's internal character more consistant. Of course, as must happen, there were some little bits of decent writing in with all the crap that was written the other way, in particular an amusing little bit of Elyvaer's internal monologue, which will have to go.

I decided early on not to go for the slow-growing-affection-because-of-adversity thing, or the hate-each-other-except-when-saving-mutual-lives. Elyvaer harbored a crush from day one, end of story. Anyhoo, I left in the first two paras for context, but the internal monologue bit at the end is what I found amusing. Other context...Trevon's the mage, one of many characters who has been cold-heartedly dumped from my current version.
---
( Story segment )