Thursday Thoughts

Working on a new story for the fantasy-writers.org monthly challenge. This time, the challenge is to write a story where the main character is not a hero. This was inspired by a discussion on the forums, and I decided to interpret it as a story about a character who catalyzes everything (or almost everything) in the story, but doesn't actually have any heroic motivations or take any heroic actions.

Surprisingly, I've actually managed to come up with a good plot for this, and a character I hope people will identify with. Much of the focus of the tale is around a romantic relationship. I'm finding that sometimes, the MC's self-image (which is important to his non-heroic...ness) cuts a little too close to home ...

Scylla and Charybdis - I'm feeling as if the action is in a lull. There's not a lot of tension, and I worry that someone might just put the book down ... but the breather is a necessary component of the action to follow. I also just did a shameless info-dump on how the two societies developed, but since I'm thirteen chapters / forty thousand words / @ 160 pages in, surely one can forgive an author a little relation of information that cannot be found out any other way.

Journal of the Dead - this is taking a long time, darnit. Am very pleased with the introduction of Oliun, one of the central antagonists; he comes off (I hope) very chilling and yet very real. Mostly, though, feeling antsy: I just want this novel edited and out there already.