You May Not

Not much to post as far as my ROW80 progress this week.  The holiday skewed me up some, and regular old character distractions…  (they suddenly all seem to want to share stories with me that have nothing to do with the pieces I’ve tried to work on).  I did get my NaNoWriMo win (will probably hit 60K for this month, but with so very much to just toss, I’m not sure it’s helped much).

House hunting is going along slowly.  We finally have enough saved up for an adequate down-payment.  So we’ll be placing an offer after this next run of showings.  If only it didn’t seem like there was someone out there intentionally throwing monkey wrenches in the affair…

And now for the WIPpet

Today I have the last seven paragraphs of Marche/Promenade I’ll be sharing with you for a while (2-9=(-)7).   It makes for a bit longer post, but this feels like a good stopping point.  We’re still with Valichii, in the opening chapter of the story.   As in previous weeks, the last line of the prior WIPpet is included in a different color at the opening of this entry.

“You’re late, Major. Head on up. The Katsdan wants you to liaise for him.”

Rather than argue that he was exactly on time—early even—, Val nodded to Hurla before he trotted the last few paces to the crown of the hill. Late, as much as any measure, depended on the enemy. Dare he take a moment to look around their vantage before greeting the two commanders? It wasn’t as if the pair of them actually needed his presence to pass messages between them at the moment. Would it be too much to hope he could serve more purpose than to stand by without any intel to offer? Especially when the first thing he would be asked when he arrived would be “what do you think?” if the past few weeks were anything to go by.

Best not. He didn’t want to be seen pausing, not now when both Army and Guard seemed to be convinced he was late to his post, and the commanders of both forces had turned to face him with barely concealed impatience.

Val stopped short Lan Kailiis’s mount and near-dove to kneel before the man. “Sir!” He considered, then tossed aside, the idea of apologizing for his delay. Even if Lan brought up the topic, they both knew apologies meant nothing to the men whose lives were dictated by careful timing.

Not having another reason for taking his time—he would have almost appreciated being called home now—, Val rose slowly, so he might see something of the landscape before the questions started.. For a second, he wondered why; it wasn’t like Mother to forget—unless she’d finally taken to heart all the times he’d told her she’d caught him in the middle of a life or death matter.

Not that Mother ever seemed to understand why the average soldier’s life mattered to him as much as his own…

As his raised his gaze to meet his commanders’, Val found his attention drawn to gathering of infantry men along the southern marches. Too close to the creek and marshes, by far. He faced his Katsdan directly. “Sir, if I may—.”

Lan Kailiis gave him a stare that would have been worthy of any of Val’s own kinsmen. “You may not, Major.” The man turned away to face his associate. “Your lieutenants have their orders, Torn?”

Next week I will be begin sharing excerpts of the opening for Singer of the Swan Song (book 1A of the Swan Song Series).  Fixing the piece has been my NaNoWriMo project, and I intend to use my WIPpet posts to urge my continued  progress on this rewrite.

Hope you have enjoyed this selection from only of my Works In Progress.  If you’d like to see a few more, head over to the WIPpet linky and visit some our other awesome members.  And thanks, of course to our hostess Emily Wrayburn.

Not His Forte

A small check-in for the ROW80 before I get to the WIPpet. Except that I’ll be hitting my 50K for NaNoWriMo today (if I can get my head into actually writing… today the procrastination beast has decided to hold me captive), there isn’t much to report. It’s been a very distracting week, and I’m dearly hoping that I’ll be able to recover some energy after Turkey Day to prep for our move. At the moment… things just feel overwhelming.

WIPpet

Today’s WIPpet continues from the opening chapter of Marche/Promenade of my Swan Song Series. We start with Val talking to his camp-mates over breakfast. The group has a lot of its mind.

As with the last few weeks, this section starts with the last line of last week’s post. I also have a small scene break here. My maths are: November (11th month) has 30 days, subtract the 21 to get 9 sentences. Or… you could just add the 1+8 for the year to get the same thing. 😉  So let’s add those together for a total of 18 sentences.

“Elsn’s been saying that nonsense for longer than I’ve held the Oath.” Val scoffed.

Jalla nodded. “Longer than that. Elsn’s spouted the same since his last Renewal at the least. If it were just him, no one would be listening.” He shrugged, fidgeting with the leather ring about his index finger. “I overheard some of the pups in the parade tents talking about it yesterday, laughing as if they expected it to be the greatest show they’d ever see.”

Val felt his expression sour along with those of his tablemates. Jal’s words couldn’t be less unpalatable than the truth of the lordlings macabre mirth. To them, a few hundred men at arms spilled out on the field was sport. Blood sport that was all too likely ended with a friend’s death, if not his own.

*

Within the glass, Val found himself riding up to the mount overlooking the field his commanders had agreed upon for the morning assault. Lan Kailiis and Torniir were already there, their aides already scurrying off to deliver orders, their dassii settling after stamping fits as their masters steeled themselves for the conflict to come.

Val drew up the reins of his own dass, until the mare’s horny head aimed to the ground before he finished his approach, only releasing the reins when his commander’s personal aide stepped forth to retrieve them. He even accepted the man’s assistance in dismounting, though if he’d thought about, he would not have been able to say why. Normally he would make a show of knowing what he needed for mounted combat even though it was not his forte.

“You’re late, Major. Head on up. The Katsdan wants you to liaise for him.”

If you enjoyed that (hope you did), you can find more snippets over at the WIPpet linky. Additionally, many thank to Emily, our gracious host. 😀

The Holy Highborn

As usual these days, another late post.  Life once again got …odd (mostly internet connectivity and access issues), here we are again on Thursday evening finalizing things.  Plan for next week…  start the post on Tuesday, so it can be finished on the correct day!

That said, I’ve had a pretty awesome week of progress.  Lots of words, some serious cleaning…  generally “good stuff”.

A thought on cleaning…  being a bit of a packrat is more than just laziness or  overwhelmed and busy (though those last two definitely are involved these days).  As I’ve tried to clean out years of accumulated … stuff (stuff I bought, sure I would use it; stuff given to me… because; stuff that was here when we moved in), I’ve found it really hard to get rid of these things—even to give them away (though that does tend to be easier than just tossing them).

An example of this…  The other day I decided it was time to trim my archive of writing magazines.  I have issues of Writer’s Digest, The Writer, and even the Romance Writers Report backlogged for years (some from the 1980s), and since a lot of the articles are either repeats or dreadfully behind the present market needs, I figured I’d clear the lot of them.

I got rid of ten (well, I haven’t yet…  they are in the “to go” pile by the door).

I really could not bring myself to get rid of more than that in one attempt.  The guilt was almost nauseating.  Like “why did I save these so long if I didn’t plan to use them again?”, “what about the hidden gems I missed!”, and the ever frequent (applied to magazines I’d never finished and started at all)… “I don’t have the right to toss these.”

Yeah…

Ten magazines from around a hundred or more…  I had been slowly weeding them, but this was my first attempt at a mass exodus.  Guess I have a little ways to go before I can just ditch the whole box.

Does anyone want some old writing magazines?  😉

We’re once again in Marche/Promenade from the Swan Series with Valichii as he tries to understand what is making his campmates so unsettled this morning.

I included six (sort of) paragraphs today, five for what should have been the 1+4 yesterday and one partial sentence from last week’s entry to offer some extra context.

…it wasn’t likely that the lordlings sponsoring this campaign would let them leave before they had a chance for jousts and sport.

No matter what the holy highborn wanted to think, their mages’ skills gave them no guarantee of victory. Just as because the forces had had success pushing back the frontier into the desert the past few years, it didn’t mean they’d won the war. To Val’s mind, it meant they all needed to be more careful; the lordlings seemed to think it meant reason to parade and fest all the longer.

He’d slept so late this morn on account of their fool carousing. Though, at least, he’d not been hauled out of his rolls to settle the spat between Hirisii’s entourage and the Harnii-Semis as several of his tent-mates had. They’d been allowed to miss first muster this morning as consolation, but given the dogs and the horns, none of them had been sleeping much when he’d stepped out for his morning toilet.

“Me neither. Anyone know who started the story?”

“First I heard it was from old Elsn.” Sibon snorted, nearly covering the table in front of him with crumbs. “Said he had a vision of the battle to end all battles and that we should prepare our souls for Her Mercy.”

“Elsn’s been saying that nonsense for longer than I’ve held the Oath.” Val scoffed.

If you enjoyed that, we have more to enjoy at the WIPpet linky  written by our other awesome members. Gratitude as always to Emily, Wrayburn for graciously maintaining the bloghop