I seem to be in tune with this story now. I have a lot of revisions to make, but they all appear to be for positive reasons. The characters are developing, and the plot is lurching from one intended crisis to another. I think that I need to introduce a few twists, but I am conscious of some other surprises in the sub-plots so it becomes a matter of pacing; too much happening all at the same time might prove confusing.
As with my other books there is a strong female character. I am beginning to like her. In my first draft she seemed more like window dressing, but then the first draft is not where I work out the deeper constructs of the story. Now, she is much more vibrant. I wrote a more romantic scene between her and another key character, they are lovers after all. I do not write sex scenes, not because I am prudish, I just do not feel the need. Most readers have a good imagination and, I believe, they can fill in the bits that I leave out. All I have done is set the scene, laced it with some appropriate dialogue, and established a very strong bond between two people, which is going to influence the story at a critical stage. Love in a time of war is a theme that runs through my Sorrow Song Trilogy. I thought that it worked quite well there in that it brought out another side to Coenred, a true warrior, and also showed that women can possess a strength of their own, like Mildryth does.
I was discussing this new book with my wife over a bottle of wine, probably getting too excited about it. It is reassuring to know that the idea is thrilling me. It is quite a feeling to be inspired about something. I often feel that we are not supposed to feel that way in our society today. The themes in our daily life, over the past two years at least, have been nothing but unremitting negativity, fear, division, and persecution. Perhaps that is why speculative fiction is still so popular? It takes both the writer and the reader to other worlds where we can escape the problems that beset us today. Some of us need the fantasy to cope with the reality.
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