This is for The Circled Green. Finally I hit the amount I was aiming for with NaNo. XD

(Random note: I reached the end of the chapter and checked the wordcount. 49 994. Why does this always happen?)

What I’m finding interesting about The Circled Green is that right now I can’t get a handle on its length. When I wrote my first draft of Blood Bound I used 80k as a guide to how close I was, and when I finished it 80k was the total of that draft.

The Circled Green isn’t like that.

At first I used 70k as the guideline – nice and in the middle.

As The Circled Green went on, and things started moving faster than I originally thought, I guessed it might come down to 60k. But now that other things are happening, and I know I need to go back and add some description and further scenes etc. it looks like it might be up to 80k, same as Blood Bound.

So I guess I’ll just have to keep writing and see how this one goes.

They say pictures are worth a thousand words, so why don’t you take a look?

I guess that image is worth thirty-five thousand words.

• Finish Lionheart draft by end of March.
• Finish The Circled Green draft by end of September.
• Write 20 000 more words for the Bones draft
• (In order to complete the previous goals) write a minimum of 10 000 words a month.

So yeah, those are the goals. The first 50 000 words of Lionheart are already with the beta, so she can get a good going on it while I write the last 20 to 30 000 words. The big elusive goal is “get Lionheart into shape so I can query it”, and given the encouragement I have received, I hope that will a) happen and b) lead to something more.

I’d cross my fingers, but I can’t type like that.

Sometimes you just need a confidence booster. And today I got one.

Yes, having an author you adore (in fact, that book inspired you to dabble in this setting) say, in regards to the opening 300 words, “This is GOOD… Really GOOD!” is definitely one way of getting a confidence boost.

Now to take this confidence boost and run with it. And keep from bugging the friends with “stupid questions”.

The better I feel, the better I write. And the better I write, the more I write. And so the more I write the faster I get to finishing the draft. I have three incomplete WIPs going at the moment (The Circled Green, Lionheart and Bones) and I would like to have three complete WIPs by the end of the year.

Does that sound reasonable to you? I think I can do it.

(P.S. Read Prophecy Of The Sisters. It’s awesome.)

As you can sort of tell, I didn’t win NaNo. I started off pretty good, actually being about a day ahead. And then I had camp, and that meant I lost about four/five days of writing time. I had a second overnight camp (but that still equals two lost days when you factor in prep-time and “oh gawd I am tired *snores” the day after) and then I got sick a little while after. So I kinda gave up, and set a new goal.

So all in all, I wrote about 25 000 words in 20 days. That is omgexcellent for me – the most I have ever written in a full month is 20 000 words, and my average is about 12 000. Now I know I can write so much more than I did before, which hopefully means I can keep doing it and finish the drafts for The Circled Green, Lionheart and Bones sooner than I otherwise would have thought.

Anyway, have one last teaser for The Circled Green (if you haven’t read the others, follow the teasers tag back a bit). I wanted to pick something with Aurora, but this is one of the earliest scenes that wasn’t all wrapped up in other stuff. Also, Ciar appears. Whether he is being less creepy is all up to you.

And yes, I know Aurora is weird at times, but just bear with it. Also bear with any errors or awkward sentences, as this is unedited NaNo stuff we’re talking about.

Grandmother Adelaide would kill her if she found out what Aurora had done.

Not only had she gone out without permission, completely missing out one of her lessons with her governess, she was not riding side-saddle as a lady ought to. Her hair was loose, she did not wear a hat, and she was galloping as fast as she could handle the horse.

And if that was not enough to earn her grandmother’s wrath to the point of murder, the fact that Aurora was wearing trousers to do all this would most definitely have done so.

So she ran. Away from Adelaide and her restrictions. Away from a world that forced her into tight corsets and huge skirts. Away from a world that discouraged her from so many things that she wanted to do, instead guiding her towards simple things like marriage. And children.

She rode so fast that the world was a blur of greens, all different shades from light and dark, blended with browns and greys of rocks and tree trunks and branches. The only thing that was truly visible was the back of the horse’s head, a warm brown colour, and his twitching ears. The world was spinning around her and she was afraid that if she stopped she would find herself in some far-off place, like India, having ridden all the way around the world.

Something dark dashed in front of her, and the horse reared up, panicked. Aurora shrieked and tried to hang on even as it did its best to throw her off. Hands reached up to grab her and pull her off. With one last scream she surrendered, and found herself flying through the air and towards the reaching hands. She twisted and turned, trying to escape their grasp but all she managed to do was to turn over and meet them, face to hands.

The world froze like that, with her seemingly suspended in the air forever. The only real thing in a vision of blurry and messy colours, waiting for the world to start up again so she could continue to fall.

It did, and down she went. The hands took hold of her and then there was nothing.

 
When the world returned, Aurora was not lying on the hard ground. Something was soft beneath her. Soft and moving.

She pressed her hands against the earth on either side and pushed up just enough to look down – and gasped. It was a man, a beautiful man, and he had cushioned her landing with his body. He had to have been the hands that were reaching for her. He had not been trying to pull her off to hurt her, she realised belatedly. He had been trying to save her.

Everything was completely inappropriate – the way she was dressed, the fact she was touching him, the way she was touching him as a whole, legs and stomach and chest all matching up and pressed together. At the very least she should have got up and off him, but she was struck by the way he looked and could not bring herself to move even one more inch away.

She had never thought a man could be beautiful. Women were the ones who were beautiful, like her. Men, on the other hand, were handsome, just like her father. That was the way things should have been, and yet it seemed completely and utterly wrong to call this man handsome. The only word that seemed right was beautiful.

He had striking, high cheekbones, and lips that shocked her with the inappropriate thoughts they caused her to have. His skin was tan but unmarked, the same even colour throughout without a single hint of blemish.

His eyes, when they opened, were so dark a brown that looked black and indistinguishable from the pupils. Even in the brightness of the day they looked like shadows – deep, out of place, and drawing Aurora in even as she fought to look away.

Inside her chest, her heart skipped a beat.

The only spot of colour that did seem bright was the hair, bright as fire, of a young woman already visiting a grave marked by a towering angel. A young boy, perhaps eight years old, seemed to be with her, although he was far more interested in exploring the graveyard itself and seeing all the symbols on the headstones than he was in actually mourning.

Nathan blinked. The red-haired woman was no longer at the angel, but one row forward. Perhaps he had been wrong, just so wrapped up in his own thoughts that he assumed the woman was here to mourn his wife as well. When she was alive, his world had revolved around Sorcha. He was young, and she was beautiful, and they were in love. Then they had one beautiful daughter, whom Nathan saw as a second sun to revolve around.

They had been so happy. And then, it was just him and Aurora, and they were not.

Sorcha was buried beneath the angel in the middle of the graveyard; the statue wore her face. In its arms it held a baby, wrapped tight and held close to its chest. The real Sorcha was deep below, in the cold ground, her arms wrapped around the babe that they had wanted so badly and that had taken her life.

It was not the baby’s fault, of course, but there were still times that he could not help but wish that she had never fallen pregnant that second time. Then he would still have a wife, Aurora would still have a mother, and none of this difficulty concerning the decision to remarry would ever be needed.

The woman had moved across the graveyard towards the exit by the time Nathan reached Sorcha’s grave. The boy was still wandering between the rows, moving closer and closer with each passing second. His expression as he looked at Nathan was one of curiosity and confusion, as if he wanted to speak to him but had no thought of what to say.

“Cinaed!” called the woman. “It is time. Come!” The boy immediately darted across the graveyard with childish impunity. She looked too young to be his mother – she could only be two or three years older than Aurora – so perhaps she was his sister. No matter what the relation, she took the boy by the hand and led him away, leaving Nathan alone amongst the silent dead.

He stood there, not speaking a word for several minutes. The church bell rang the hour, and he had to wait until the sound subsided to speak the words he had finally found.

“Dear Sorcha,” he began. A breeze, oddly cold for the summer’s day, blew through the cemetery and he found himself struggling for the words he had decided upon. “I am so sorry, can you forgive me for this?”

He could picture her now, imagining what it would be like if she were somehow able to hear his words and answer back. If they were at home she would be sitting in her favourite chair in her sitting room, and looking out the window that opened to the west while she did her needlework. It would be the late afternoon, and the setting sun would paint everything the colours of roses and gold.

One of my main characters is meant to be a creeper. He has been watching the female lead for two years through windows etc. and under heavy glamours. He obviously is obsessed (another character points this out just prior to the following snippet, and tells Ciar what he really should do… and provides visual aides) and has plenty of free time on his hands.

It is meant to be disturbing, and I think I succeeded, considering I really wanted to get out of his POV and felt like I needed to take a shower afterwards.

Anyway, feel the creepy.

He raised a hand towards the window, and on the other side of the glass the catch began to turn. Once that was unlocked all it would take to open it was a push; the window opened inward, allowing both the night and Ciar to enter without even a sound. The rug was soft under his bare feet as he crossed the floor to the bed; had there been any sounds of movement it would have muffled them, but he was light as air.

He stopped short of the edge of the bed, taking in the sight of what lay there. Still asleep, Aurora lay on her back. Her hair was arranged around her hair like a halo, and Ciar found himself wishing that it was not dark. The moments before she blew out the lights were always the best: the candlelight gave a touch of warmth to her fair skin and made her hair look like burnished gold.

If she was sun, moon and stars to her father, in Ciar’s eyes she outshone them all – he truly did see her in hyperbole, in all the words the poets would use, and without irony. He meant what he thought and never stopped to consider otherwise.

This was the closest he had ever got to her. He was close enough now to see the way her lip curved. The length of her eyelashes. The way her chest rose and fell as she breathed.

She looked so peaceful, just lying there, asleep, that he could have stayed and watched her until the night started to lighten and become dawn. But that was not what he had come here for – he was not going to watch any more. Although the temptation was strong to touch her cheeks, trace the outline of her lips, he forced his hand to move upwards. Past her nose, past her eyes, until it hovered just above the centre of her forehead.

It’s 8.50am, I am sitting here at my house with Rebekah and we are writing away. Well, I was writing away, but I have finished my prologue and needed to check something. So, in the meantime, have a really really really rough prologue to tide you over, and also as my first snippet.

Make sense, no?

She had fought for two days, but ultimately she had lost. In the end death would always emerge triumphant. And this day she was its prize.

“They will come for me,” she croaked. Her voice was as dry as her mouth, her lips cracked like the earth at the height of a hot summer. “They will come for me. Soon.”

Her confidant in all her secrets, the ageing cook of her husband’s household, watched Sorcha struggle to sit up. Her hair, that soft white-blond colour that one usually sees only in very small children, was matted against fair skin slicked with sweat. Her blue eyes were still bright with the fever that continued to ravage her body.

The pregnancy as a whole had been hard on her, her slender figure becoming even more waif-like as her growing stomach swelled further. But even as the child acted more like a parasite and she its host, Sorcha had endured, aglow with talk about how this one would be a boy and how she loved him already. She felt it in her heart, she had said.

The birth had been worse. Much worse.

The babe – it was a boy, after all – had died not long after entering this world. Tiny and weak it lay there, silent as the grave while his mother wept and wailed, begging unseen people to help her, for someone to come and save her baby.

“I really should have known not to have made a bargain with them,” Sorcha said. Sanity had finally returned from the hold of the fever, although only to let her say goodbye. “They never just grant boons with no consequences. Why should I have been any different to them?”

“You had no choice, my lady.”

“I did, I did. But were they really choices? Even if I had known of this… condition… it would have meant abandoning one child at the very least.”

“My lady?”

Sorcha stiffened, grasping into the bed linen that covered her. “Did you hear that?” she asked, ignoring her servant’s previous question.

“Hear what?”

Sorcha closed her eyes but did not relax into her pillows. “The Bean Shìth is calling. I can hear the song, I hear what she says.” Her eyes opened and fixed upon the west-facing window. “Aye, I hear you. I will come, but not just yet.”

“Please, Sorcha, hold on.” She spoke as a friend and confidant then, the keeper of lifetimes of secrets, and not as a servant. “For the sake of your husband, for the sake of your child!”

A bitter smile crossed Sorcha’s face at those words. “Everything I have done was for his sake, and all of this – this ending, this beginning – was for the sake of my child. Just not the child you speak of.

“I speak of her now, though. They will come for her, sooner or later. She may be ignorant of the truth, but they will not be. They know of her, and the only thing that keeps them from her is me.” She paused for breath, so far gone now that even speech was tiring. “The burdan falls to you now that I have failed. Protect her, keep her safe. You know the secrets – I have taught you them well.”

“Yes, my lady.”

“Promise me you will keep her safe, as safe as you can!” A plea, a demand, a hope. “Please!”

“I promise, my lady.”

“Good.” With a sigh, Sorcha finally sank back into the voluminous pillows that supported her. “Aye, aye,” she said softly, tilting her head slightly in the direction of the open window, “I hear you. Soon, soon.”

There was a knock at the door then, and the cook jumped. She was not supposed to be here with her alone, but Sorcha had ordered the holy man out for now. She had things she wanted to say in private, and no one would ever make her waver on that decision.

Sorcha smiled. “Let my lovelies in. It is time for me to say farewell. For now.”

I don’t think I’ll be able to get the full 50k (although if I do that’ll be bloody fantastic), but I do hope that this will motivate me into getting much more than my usual monthly amount written. 30k? I would love that, really.

Anyway, in the meantime I will be working on Lionheart (I did not know I was at the 63% mark until I checked just a little while ago) and dabbling in Bones. And, of course, I’ll be doing prep work for The Circled Green.

I also need to come up with an actual blurb thing for The Circled Green, but not right now as it’s nearly midnight.