Days 7, 8, & 9: Yipee-ki-yay and the Deep Green

Sorry for the sudden lack of posts. I was determined that Saturday be a day of rest. So I worked all week to get the word count up so that I wouldn't have to worry about skipping a day.

Today, I went back over my outline, adding and taking out scenes as necessary and to my complete surprise, found that I am entirely in love with my story. It's like this: a few summers ago, I went to Europe and loved everything about it - but I was a stranger in a strange land. When my plane landed in Atlanta, I almost cried. I was home. So, yesterday when I stepped back into the world I created and found that I understood the direction of the plot, my characters, the mythology and the political situation, it was a great and wonderful thing.

Many of the places over the Continent are similar, if in very strange ways, to the places I grew up. When I was little, we lived in a log cabin my dad built for my mom before I was born, and when it rained, the smell of pine and resin filled the warm log rooms. But outside the house, woods spread out with their dark green secrets in the damp. I remember standing at the back door, just knowing there as some menace in that crush of olive and hunter. When I was too unnerved to look anymore, I would tear back to the front door, staying near my mom and obscenely fat cat for the rest of the day. All of that to say this: when I write about a lordling's home in the high forest mountains, those same smells and that same fear of the heavy green find their way into my characters and setting. And yesterday, it happened all at once and the writing life was good.

Now, to completely shift the conversation:

Today, I watched Die Hard for the first time and I think John McClane may be the best hero ever. Not only does he get shot, punched, rolled down some stairs, but he runs over glass, bleeds all over the building and blows up a bag of C4 fighting terrorists - and still manages to be the awesome that is Bruce Willis. That's all I have to say on that one. Tonight, I plan to watch The Prestige with my mom; I've already seen it, but I hope she enjoys it as much as I do.

The last thing: I have decided to put down George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire. The book has come to fill my sleeping and waking thoughts, while the tragic events of the series actually affect my moods. So, I will be taking a break, to read something more like Susan Cooper's The Dark is Rising, Garth Nix's Abhorsen Trilogy or his The Keys to the Kingdom. Any suggestions for lighter fantasy/scifi reading?

So say we all.
Bri