Friday Notes

I'm currently listening to this song on repeat. It doesn't match the vibe of anything I'm working on, but gosh, is it stirring and gorgeous. 

Currently reading Queen's Play by Dorothy Dunnett, book two in her Lymond Chronicles, which I blogged about last week here. Truly exceptional historical fiction that I can't put down. 

On the writing front, it's felt like a bit of a less-than-productive week, but again, when I look back at the overall numbers, that's more a matter of my perception. In the past three weeks, I've written 15k words on Golden Eagle, 8k on my secret project, and 2k on one of my standalones - and that doesn't count rewrites and added scenes on Dragon Slayer, which is in its most stressful stage of edits. The edits that make you question everything. Usually, that kind of anxiety is a sign that the book is actually quite good. I just wouldn't be me without a last minute panic before I stamp the thing as finished. 

When I checked all my various apps this morning, I saw these Tweets from an author whose work and career I admire, it was a lovely reminder:

Sometimes, just because you love something you're working on, it doesn't mean other people will. But it also doesn't mean that no one will. In fact, there are probably people out there who will really, really love it once they find it. It's the finding of the audience that can take some time, and a whole lot of persistence. All you can do is love the thing, and pour your everything into it. You have to believe in your art before anyone else will. 

I'm hoping to spend the weekend doing my final polish on DS. I'm still going to send print ARCs! Those are coming, as is the official announcement and sign-up for it. I've taken my sweet time with editing - which stresses me - but it was really important to examine the book from every angle, and work on it in manageable chunks. 

Happy weekend, everyone! 

Here's some lines I wrote this week that I'm rather proud of:

Golden Eagle:

“A vampire we met thirty years ago.”

She felt her brows go up. “Just the once? And you remembered his scent that well?”

He sent her a direct look. “This one I did.”

“Alright,” she said, when he didn’t back down. “Who is he?”

He glanced away, then, just as the waitress returned and thumped down plates. When she was gone, Nikita shook his head and said, “Not a friend.”

Trina looked to Sasha – whose cheeks gleamed rosy pink in the incoming sunlight. A trick of the glass, she guessed. “We met him and his Familiar years ago. It was….” He narrowed his eyes and tipped his head, thinking. “The eighties. Late eighties.”

“You had that mohawk, then,” Nikita reminded.

“Oh, yeah! Eighty-eight, then. I only had it the one winter.”

Trina tried to imagine Sasha with a mohawk; it would have suited his black leather jacket and tight jeans look – in fact, both he and Nik didn’t seem to have outgrown the eighties when it came to fashion – but she thought the shoulder-length hair suited the narrow shape of his face.

“It was Christmastime,” he continued. “And we were shopping for a tree. Or, I was, Nik was still on the sidewalk.”

Trina snuck a glance toward her ancestor, easily imaging his sour face – much like the one he wore now – as he waited, hands in pockets, for Sasha to finish up whatever fun thing he was doing so they could go sit moodily in a bar somewhere. But then he surprised her, his gaze flicking toward Sasha, his expression softening a fraction. A minute change, but one that offered a glimpse of bottomless warmth and fondness.

Standalone:

She recorked the wine and let the fridge door slap shut, turning toward him. “Get you anything to drink?” she offered, her politeness undercut by the tremor in her voice. “I’ve got beer, and…”

She trailed off when her gaze finally landed on him.

He was tall, over six feet. Solid, but the beat-up jeans and canvas work jacket couldn’t manage to conceal a trim waist, a muscled chest and arms. A big, powerful man, with close-cropped dark hair curling faintly at the ends from the humidity. A lean, but strong jaw; nose that had been broken a few times.

It was the eyes that arrested her, though. Dark – black in the low lamplight – and intense. The eyes of a predator that drilled right through her, sizing her up, judging her.

Eyes that had looked at her that way before.

She gasped for the second time tonight, softer this time. “You’re…you’re my mechanic.”

“One of ‘em,” he said, his gaze steady, unblinking. “That a problem?”

She tried to remember his name, glimpsed sewn over the breast pocket of his work smock. Something unremarkable. But she’d noticed it; she’d noticed him.

“No,” she said, finally. “Not so long as you’re willing to–”

“I am.”

Secret Project:

Memory like a punch: tree trunks naked against a white sky; rough scrape of breathing that wasn’t her own; hot, coppery smell filling her lungs; a crashing, limbs snapping.

She took a short, sharp breath and forced her thoughts to the concrete: to the things she knew as fact. Snippets of the evening news; black-and-white newspaper photos, her parents' low, uneasy murmurs in the next room, as she and Charlotte feigned interest in a movie on the den’s TV.

Lee gave her a long, tight-lipped look, and shook his head. “You don’t want to talk about that.”