2,559 words today in my efforts to catch up from yesterday. I’m still writing. I attribute my stamina to repeatedly listening to the new single from one of my favorite musicians. The only downside is that I keep wanting to stop and listen every time the clean vocals come in. Great atmosphere.

Another busy day filled with drama, treachery, and screaming at the computer to fucking install Windows 7 already. I’m still in the process of tweaking everything back to how I want it, so I doubt I’ll get any more writing done tonight. 928 words it is, then. Oh, and I ended up revising yesterday’s “finished” chapter, so the excerpt below still contains skinshifter doings.

Turning back to the line, Jyre extended his awareness around him like an expanding halo. The chill of the necroworker reached him first, then the dim glimmers of wounded humans. If he concentrated hard enough, he could sense the snarled tangle of their minds, fear sharpening their thoughts like loops of razor wire.

Things would be so much easier if he could actually read their minds. Thracian had once tried to show him, but he’d never been able to discern more than raw emotions and occasionally faint shadows of thoughts, dim and flickering like the forms of fish beneath a glassy pond.

Mmph. A shitload of non-writing stuff needed to be done today, with the effect that I didn’t begin working on Gemini City until this evening. So, 1,335 words so far, and 3,350 words total. But! I finished the chapter. Tomorrow it’s back to Gavin. A quick excerpt below. It probably won’t make much sense.

They carried the body between them as if helping a drunk man, crossing the decorative gardens to avoid the crowds. Anything more than a glance would give a bystander pause, especially when blood began seeping into Kiri’s champagne-colored gown. “Sir,” she said suddenly. “Badges.”

“Shit. Follow my lead,” said Jyre. “With luck, they’ll see him as another victim.”

After a few more steps, a light flashed over them. “Injured?” barked an officer, one hand hovering over his nightstick.

“We were attacked. He’s badly hurt,” said Jyre. He smelled tears running down Kiri’s cheeks as the light flicked to her face. Oh, she was good.

“I’ll say.” The light hovered on Varik’s body, then switched back to Jyre’s face. “Did you see what did it?”

“No,” said Kiri, and hitched in a breath. “We just heard his screams.”

I don’t think I’ll get any more done tonight, so I’ll go ahead and list 2,015 as the day’s word count. I’m enjoying writing this chapter so far; finally the skinshifters are getting some page time.

“They all reek of rot,” said Jyre’s sister, tucking her arm into his. Her other hand ran down her fur stole as if preening, but he recognized the nervous tic. She was merely making sure the bones of her dead lover hadn’t fallen from their pouch underneath the fur.

“Welcome to South Gemini,” he murmured. Another wave of the distinctive smell of spliced, tortured flesh rolled over them, sharp like formaldehyde. They strolled along the steps of the opera house, listening to the chatter from the socialites. Those who’d had necrowork done to their faces seemed oblivious to the subtle crawling of their skin, the twitching of skinshifter flesh on human skulls. When one tipped his hat to them, Felia turned her face to Jyre as if shy. “Disgusting,” she hissed under her breath, knowing the man wouldn’t hear. Jyre found he couldn’t look for long either.

“We’ll have our hands full,” he said, glancing around. He felt his bones hum as the wyrm inside him extended her awareness beyond his body. “Even the trees are consuming flexmer — ground bone in the soil as fertilizer, leaves polished with fat…”

Felia’s wyrm must have done the same, for after a moment she replied, “So are the humans — that boy selling newspapers and sausages that we passed down the street, everything he’s peddling began as a shifter.”

Four cups of coffee and an aching back from being hunched over the computer. Yup, it’s Nov. 1st.

The story is flowing at a good clip so far — since I’m still bright-eyed and bushy-tailed at this point, I’m concentrating on quality over quantity. I’ll probably post an excerpt later today when I update my word count on NaNo’s site. Which is still working for me, by the way. I’m pleasantly surprised it hasn’t died from the massive influx of NaNoers like every other year.

I’ve finished weaving the new subplot into Gemini City’s main story, refurbished the ending, and added a few more characters to the cast. According to my estimates, the finished first draft should now be a solid 90K. Let the writing commence!

Thanks to one of Merrilee’s posts, I was introduced to Liquid Story Binder XE and have since been playing with it all day. This program is dangerously fun; I think I cackled out loud when I saw the multimedia storyboard. Beyond that, it offers a mixture of options for flexible, do-it-yourself organization that’s perfect for a scatterbrain like me. A big thank you to Merrilee!

I mentioned in yesterday’s post how Gemini City needed a subplot. After some poking and plotting, I’ve come up with one. With the main thrust of the story about Gavin struggling with demonic possession and seeking revenge against those responsible for his lover’s death, the subplot concerns the demons themselves — called taal — and their main organization in Gemini City, the Boffeybrutes. Quick note 1: although taal can and do possess humans as a last ditch survival method, they are born with their own physical bodies and are the most powerful skinshifters. Quick note 2: Necroworkers specialize in harvesting skinshifter flesh for human use and are thus the biggest enemies of all skinshifters.

ANYWAY, Jyre has taken over as leader of the Boffeybrutes along with his sister, Felia. Though they work out of North Gemini, they are interested in expanding their influence throughout the entire city — even the southern sections dominated by humans. There are plenty of hurdles in their way — various skinshifter wolf packs have split up the underbelly of South Gemini like so many pieces of a pie (think of the Mafia and New York City) and are not keen on losing their territories. The many necroworkers that live and own businesses will also fight against the Brutes, fearing for their survival if the demons should take control.

How does this tie in to Gavin’s storyline? Since he has an intimate knowledge of South Gemini, Jyre and Felia are interested in picking his brain for information, even more so when he reveals the wolves are beginning to work with necroworkers. He agrees to help them if they lend muscle and money in his pursuit for revenge. Oh, and get that damn demon out of his body.

So…what think ye? Does this feel like a good fit? Does it even make sense? Is “Boffeybrute” too silly a name for a demon army? (I’m ridiculously attached to it for reasons even I can’t name, but if enough readers think it needs to go, it shall go.)

I’ve got a cold. It’s not the worst I’ve ever had, but I’m still snuffly and muzzy-headed and disinclined to pick up a paintbrush or pen. Instead, I’m reading through what’s written of Gemini City and have just realized I need to add a subplot.

For one thing, my wordcount is lower than I predicted compared with the number of events and plot points that have happened. Sure, I can add some details and dialogue to pad things out, but that trick only works so far before you’re drowning the reader in useless filler. And I hate useless filler. Secondly, the Gavin storyline packs a lot at a fast pace, and I think a subplot that takes a “slow simmer” approach will provide a better balance. Thirdly, having two storylines would nicely fit the book’s binary motif.

I already have a strong idea for the subplot; it’s mostly a matter of bulking out the roles of several minor characters and introducing them earlier. Once I finish with this box of Kleenex I’ll revise the outline accordingly. In the meantime I’m off to make more hot tea.

I just finished Tender Morsels by Margo Lanagan today. It’s a slippery, fairly devastating novel, one that requires more than one read to dig into the rich symbolism. I think I may love it, but I’ll have to mull over it a few days to know for sure.

Flash fic time, something I cranked out in fifteen minutes. Consider that a fair warning.

Dusk
So I killed a star. What of it? There are billions of the buggers gleaming down at us each night. What’s one less?

How? I’m not spending my last day revealing secrets like I’m some cruddy magician. Let ‘em figure out how I did it. You said you had interesting questions, new questions. I’ve been hearing “How?” since it first started fading. Why? Christ, just as bad. My mother ate too much sugar when she was pregnant. I watched too many disaster movies as a kid. My head’s not screwed on right. Make up your own reason.

Look, it doesn’t matter why I killed the sun. What matters is what you’re all gonna do now. These are the last hours of sunlight, you know… I hope you’re not scared of the dark.

I sometimes wonder if there would be less crap in the fantasy genre if more writers took an anthropology class or two. The biggest excuse for a fantasy that breaks a reader’s suspension of disbelief amounts to nothing more than, “It’s fantasy. Anything can happen.”

Well fine, but the problem isn’t whether you can whip out a four-page explanation for how your dwarves build their outhouses. In fact, no one’s likely to care. What’s vital to a successful fantasy is internal consistency — how does everything tie together? And that is what the field of cultural anthropology has been teaching me — how seemingly separate aspects of life such as marriage customs, subsistence, and language are truly interwoven with each other. Change one and all are affected.

For example, social stratification didn’t really exist until humans developed agriculture to get their food. In other words, upper class, middle class, and lower class didn’t exist until farming. Neither did the concept of owning land. As for parceling up people into a list of occupations (plummer, doctor, artist, farmer, Wal-mart greeter)? Nope. When you think about it, many core concepts that we’re familiar with (how many mediocre fantasy novels containing downtrodden peasants and greedy, selfish lords have you read?) stem from our need to get food. Such a simple need, so many complex solutions.

I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that poorly-researched or clichéd worldbuilding is a common sight in fantasy. Elves that do nothing but compose poetry and sing to trees all day, for example. Who’s finding and preparing their food for them, then? 97% of Americans don’t grow or prepare their own food, but there’s a large catch: the majority of us would be completely fucked if we were left to find our own food. We’ve lost the knowledge of how to grow and harvest crops, how to raise and slaughter animals, how to forage without accidentally poisoning ourselves. There’s a drawback to having the luxury of not spending every waking hour devoted to getting food: you can no longer feed yourself.

So. About those hypothetical elves. Is there a small percentage that does procure food for the rest of the population? Are these farmers viewed differently? Is there a class system, obvious or otherwise, as happens so many times with agriculture?

Maybe these are questions that will never be directly asked in your story. But knowing the intricate workings of culture and how it all ties together provides that much more of an edge when it comes to enriching a story’s setting and creating internal consistency. If you’re aware of the connections, you can make the reader aware of them as well. And there is nothing more convincing than seeing the consequences of an action.