Back to Basics

Hooray, Thursday is here. That means it must be…

Well, okay, so I’m not on time today.

I took yesterday off for some (mostly) me-time. I think it helped. I’d been fighting a bit of a head-cold, and taking the break seems to have settled the sinuses nicely. A blessing when that happens.

Still, it is now beyond time for my ROW80 check-in and WIPpet Wednesday post. So in tradition with breaking tradition…

my ROW80 mini

Writing-wise this has been an incredible week. I confess, I haven’t always finished my StoryADay stories in a day (always within 24 hrs, but it seems I work best sleeping on them halfway through). That said, I’ve got a bunch of fun bits and pieces from in and out of my story world to explore further some day.

And… because the Boodle wants to share our stories at the same time, my plans for a Sunday PDF are being changed to a Friday post of stories. I may (still thinking on that) be posting them from my “name” blog. I won’t be posting everything. Some pieces I want to develop further. Some involve spoilers for the novels I’m working on now, and I don’t want to reveal too much too soon. I’ll try to share a line from everything.

Everything else is…  so/so.  I confess, I’ve made better friends with my inner-couch potato than is probably wise.  I haven’t even been Pokémon hunting as much.  Probably why the Boodle wants some “us-time” tonight…  I hope it doesn’t rain too soon.

The WIPpet

Today is a piece from a scratch piece I’ve been playing with to decompress. It started out a version of Courting the Swan Song that came to me after my characters all ganged up on me at once and said “It didn’t happen like that at all.” Basically, the original versions I’d been jotting down were too ‘nicey-nice’. To quote ‘Listii, “The brat weren’t capable of being as bad as all that.”

The Brat, in this case being, Alanii…

So, I started trying to incorporate this pieces they were telling me happened into my vision of their world. It was closer, and I find the combination of my creation and their reality a fun place to play. So, since I’ve been in a play and test things mood lately, I’m here to share eight small paragraphs from this new/old piece of CTSS:

“Did you have to tell Morvan about those idiots, ‘Listii?  You know what those hot heads are going to do, don’t you?”

He nodded. “Same as you, just more effectively.”

Visse glared at him. “I wouldn’t have tried to hurt them.”

“No. You’d have been hurt,” he said. “Lies like that need to be stopped–people who spread them must be too.”

“All you’ve done is make sure the lies get said behind closed doors, ‘Listii. You aren’t going to stop them from talking.”

He shrugged keeping his gaze straight ahead. “I’ve stopped those three.”

He was saved from more of her accusing looks by the welcome from the caller at the entrance to the slave stocks. He left his sister’s side just long enough to register for his bidding placard. The bag of bid chits he tied to his belt. Not that he didn’t trust his sister, but he knew full well that any troublemakers would think twice about trying something against him, where they might not be so smart regarding her.

They didn’t need to be kicked out of the market a second time for Vissellii gutting a man.

Hope you enjoyed that. Why not head over to the WIPpet linky and visit some our other awesome members now? Big cheers to Emily Witt for being our gracious hostess.