The Epilogue

So I just wrote the epilogue for The Blood of Renatus. I know I said I was going to focus on finishing the beginning and here I am writing the very end. I couldn't help it though, it was nagging at me and I just had to write it. I wasn't even planning on writing an epilogue, in general I don't really like prologue's or epilogues but I guess my book just wanted to have one.

It's very short, only about 1300 words and very creepy. I however like it very much. I'm sure I'll expand it and make it better at some other date but it just needed to get on paper or my brain was going to explode.

So the interesting thing about the epilogue is that I write it from the perspective of flowers and a tree. It starts with:

The flowers in the High Blood Priest’s antechamber deep within the Circle of Blood had no concept of time. They did, however, realize that they had not fed in far longer than needed.

And ends with:

They praised the tree for bringing him back and would have smiled had they had mouths. But they didn’t smile. They were, after all, only flowers.

Anyway, I quite like it and I feel better for writing it. It was just gnawing on my brain even though I'm not even close to finishing the book. It's exciting though, I like knowing that I have the rest of the book planned out i detail. Other scenes are screaming at me to write them and my fingers are itching to do as they bid.

Don't tell my boss I wrote this while at work though...shhhh! :)

Chapter 2

So I finished chapter 2 tonight. Well it's the "new" chapter 2 post my re-organization of the beginning of the novel. I have to admit, I really struggled with this chapter. It wasn't the same struggle that I've had with other chapters. Take chapter 11...that chapter sucked so much to write. It's a total filler chapter, it's boring and blah. But that wasn't the problem at all that I faced with chapter 2.

Chapter 2 is a Shay chapter, Shay is normally very easy for me to write. I write her chapters more quickly than I do any of the rest of my characters and I wrote the first half of this chapter very fast and very easily. Then I stalled I stopped at a scene in which a villain is introduced and Shay gets into trouble. I felt uncomfortable writing the scene because I had to write probably the most evil villain I think I've ever created. Seriously, I'm pretty sure that he's the creepiest, most evil, most insane dude ever. And frankly he makes my previous worries about Savitr (Shay's brother) being too mean seem like nothing.

You know, I probably didn't even make the scene that bad. I know I held back somewhat because I was so uncomfortable. I'm pretty sure I was projecting all the evilness that I know about this scary, creepy dude onto the scene. Anyway it was hard for me to write it and I feel like my skin is still crawling after writing that villain. Sheesh!

So some updated stats, Chapter 2 turned out to be about 4500 words bringing my total word count to about 66,100 words. I still have a very long way to go but I'm making progress. Chapter 3 has been started but I haven't gotten very far in it. It's a Katze chapter, kind of a fun one too, she gets to be her crazy self without Rafe balancing her.

I wrote about 2100 words tonight, probably the biggest chunk in one sitting in awhile. It's good, I like feeling like I'm moving forward. I like making progress even if my book was poorly planned and my chapters uncomfortable to write. it's still good. Plus I know that Shay will be just fine and I have the death of this villain planned very nicely. :)

Mondays and Villains

Okay so I'm fully aware that it is no longer Monday. However, I had such a bad case of feeling "Mondayish" yesterday that I could barely bring myself to think let alone write a deeply profound (I know, right?) blog post.

So this weekend I didn't get as much writing done as I wanted. I did manage to squeeze in a few pages but nothing spectacular. I did however, clean the master bathroom (a daunting task) and unpack the remaining boxes (except for 2) left in the house on Saturday. Sunday was spent visiting the wonderful Mothers in my life. Yesterday was spent being a full blown Monday in all its woeful glory. I feel like the whole day passed by me while I was in a Monday daze. I'm really glad today is Tuesday.

So now lets talk about my book. It's written in 3rd person limited with several different POVs. Which in my opinion is the best way to write an epic fantasy novel. First person just would be far too limited with the scope of the novel. I can't write it all from Gabriel's perspective because he spends pretty much the first 3/4 of the book on an island instead of where the rest of the action takes place. I've also never really been a fan of 3rd person omniscient because I feel like I know too much and I'd prefer to find things out with the characters. I won't even talk about writing in 2nd person.

Okay now I have a slight dilemma with my limited 3rd person pov. I realized that my villain(s) have no voice whatsoever in my novel as of yet. They are amorphous bad guys. Not good. The protagonists all talk about how evil the Emperor is (except Shay but that's not important) but we never see his pov and we never hear his motivations. That's really bad on my part and I need to remedy it. The problem I have is if the Emperor has his own chapter from HIS pov then it'll give way too much plot away too quickly. Can't have the reader knowing exactly what's going on so early. I've thought about sticking a chapter in of someone close to the Emperor but I'm dubious.

I could always wait until after some important stuff happens in the middle of the book to give voice to the evil bad guy in question. I mean Gabriel (good guy) has chapter 1 and then doesn't appear again until chapter 21. That's 20 chapters sans Gabriel...granted he isn't in the thick of the action but he's a very important character. Maybe I'm just over analyzing it all. Sarah would tell me just to stop thinking and start writing. I do like writing bad guys, I'm really excited to write chapter 22 which is a "bad" guys' (but not a villain) chapter.

Like I said before, part of why I like 3rd person limited is because you learn what's truly going on with the characters. If I add in information about the villain(s) too soon then some climatic events won't be as ermm climatic.

Any advice? I wish I knew an editor, I'm stumped.