calmI wish everything I wrote could come out the way the scene I wrote this morning did. It was easy, and I could feel the shape of it in my head, like I used to be able to, and the characters were pulling their weight, and all the layers were just there, where they should be, and the writing smoothed out by the second pass--and some of it, I actually think, is kind of good. And it has resonance, and things at stake, and it does work.
And it's pretty without being purple.
I would like to keep this sense of accomplishment for a while.
Here's a sentence or two I can show you without spoiling:
Shoulder to shoulder, they waited. Chaz heard Todd breathing, slow and steady, unruffled and unhurried, as if all he had to do in life was take in air and let it out again.
I like it. I think it works.
Somebody check my DNA. I think I've been replaced.
All of which reminds me: I should have some copies of the galleys of All the Windwracked Stars to give away within a couple of weeks (Two, I expect.) For those of you who have not been playing the home game, AtWS is a Norse noir steampunk periapocalyptic mythic cyberfantasy, first in a not-a-trilogy collectively known as The Edda of Burdens, which is being published by Tor in October of this year. It's set in the same world as my short stories "Ice," and "The Devil You Don't."
Anybody got a bright idea for some kind of contest I could run to determine who gets the copies? This is something like nine months in advance of release, so it's a pretty big treat.
