Thursday Thoughts

Working on another short story, this from one from a first person male POV. This is unusual for me - I usually write from a female POV, and it's typically third person when I do a male character. However, I've noticed a disturbing trend to when I do choose a male POV: the story always seems to have a mysterious and powerful woman as a key element. They aren't necessarily the center, but they're always there. This strikes me as ... cheating, somehow.

This brought me around to the thought of rewriting The Sintellyn Medallion, which of my old novels is probably the one that had the strongest male POV character. There were two female characters to counterbalance that, but they had lesser weight, so the scenes typically went: Tieruko, Shaiyan, Tieruko, Mikane, Tieruko, Shaiyan ... etc.

My concern with the novel is in how many of its elements are cliche, including the titular McGuffin (which is a power focus - no specific abilities, but amplifies anyone who uses it), the fact that I used black (the magic is color-aspected) and death magic as the backstory villain, and a lost heir subplot.

But it's counterbalanced by aspects I simply loved: the novel is set several years after the black-aspected villain attempted to take over the world, the MC has already been the hero (a child hero, at that), and, psychologically scarred by the whole thing, is just trying to live his life in the aftermath. A race that would be viewed as "evil" by the average person is delved into in depth, and I had a lot of fun exploring a very alien, amoral perspective ... while making the character in question a sympathetic ally.

It also reverses aforesaid bad habit of mine: when Mikane meets Tieruko for the first time, she pretty much falls head over heels for him (a sentiment he never returns).

So this goes into my file of projects to consider after I finish Scylla and Charybdis. Which I am still about 30k (estimated) from doing ... and I would like to have Journal of the Dead finalized first, too. Could my brain please stop spooling off ideas while I'm working on the ones I have?