1,200 yesterday and 1,300 today – and today was cut off by 1.5 hours. It does take a while to get going, doesn’t it? Unfortunately, if you only have the cracks of the day to write in, you never really get going. I’m excited to see what is produced over the final two days next week, although one of those I have to prep my classroom instead of just using it as a writing hidey-hole.

These sessions have really fattened an area otherwise non-consequential, but I am hoping it keeps as it helps the city of Csarvent feel alive. It also prepares the reader well for a character who is notable in the third book.

On that note, though, as usual, I am again beset by worries over whether I need to split this book in half. I am halfway through Chapter 16 (I skip all over the place, nowhere near that far actually) and it is 29.5 pages. I am yet to get to the second half of the chapter. If I split the book into two, this could easily be its own chapter – even ends on a DUN DUN DUN. That creates its own problems, though. Keeping it, however, the book and these chapters are getting kind of nuts. I want to maintain the same depth of scope and character as I had in Purge of Ashes, but with so many more story lines it is fast becoming insane. Insanely great? Maybe just insane.

Either way, there it is. Also cool to note, today I finally got to write about a character who I created entirely because the name I made up for my almanac of characters so long ago was so cool. Now she’s an important part of the story, having once just been a nifty combination of letters. “Kryloak.”

My favourite pull away today:

“The black ink of the round was half faded into her very skin, a mess of a pattern across her clavicle and breasts. Bruises ran the length of her right side, dark, blotchy and uniform. Kryloak’s eyes widened and stared at her slim finger as it ran a line along one of Daia’s ribs. Leaning forward a little revealed a purple welt twisted up like a whirlpool that covered near half of her skin-pressed rib cage. Its unhealthy hues rolled in and out of the depressions between bones, obscuring the smear of burst blood vessels and making a mess of a mess. The heiress’s gentle touch did not make her jump, but still sent a squeal of tenderness up her nerves. By Kryloak’s stares and Saishan’s idle hands, Daia judged that the Codine Aggregate was far more familiar with disease and malnourishment than the battle scars of fools prone to risk.”