I haven’t done a good blog post in a while. I’ve been trying to type one up, and have about 3 going right now that I just don’t like very much. In any case, I have finally managed to nail down a draft of chapter 10 of War of Shadows that feels pretty good. I need to spend a bit more time with it before I can go on to one last short chapter with this character before heading back off to the main character. I’m even planning to take some time off next week so that I can focus on writing, although the week already seems pretty full, and so that may not really pan out. Right now, I’m sitting at about 76,000 words, making up 17 chapters and a short prologue. There are still quit a few bits and pieces in those first 17 chapters that could be expanded and better fleshed out, and so realistically, once I get that all done, I’d probably closer to that original 80,000 target. When it’s all said an done, I’m looking at 90-95K words, I’m planning 4 more chapters, two of which are likely to be fairly short.

One of the interesting things (to me) about this book as I move toward the end is that I’ve got these brothers who are headed for opposite sides of the war. This is something that’s known to the reader from about chapter 6 or so. The ‘other brother’, the one who is not the protagonist, isn’t a super evil take-over-the-world bad guy. He’s nobleman making his claim on land he feels he’s entitled to. After I’d written him, I found that instead of being an unlikable character, which I expected, he’s not -and that works fine. At the outset of the story, these brothers are pointed in very different directions and have goals that could be described as opposite, yet as they advance I can see them possibly ending up where the other had intended to be – at least vaguely. I’m thinking that during one polishing pass through or another, I might really play this up, a sort of tale of two brothers thing.

Well that was rambling wasn’t it… I’ll try to think up something interesting to say next time.