A Light Through the Darkness

Starting Count: 71757
Ending Count: 75831
Net Gain: +4074
Current NaNo count: 8857
Current Word YTD count: 9963
Val’s Tea Fund: $5


Starting line:
“Where is she now?” she asked, and the scene in the bowl changed, showing a large house surrounded by a fence of trees. Shimmering trees, pulsing with Power, intertwined with one another by way of gold and silver cords lacing through their leaves, Shadows draped in the branches. Madness ground her teeth together. Damn. She’d reached the others.

Ending line:
The spring will come. All we have to do is survive until then.

Darling:
She stepped back, watching blood and sinew spread over the skeleton of Chaos and Blood that she’d created. The stallion from the dream that she’d drawn Thom into stamped his foot as he came into full flesh, a fire in his red eyes and his breath hot in the small room. He tossed his head and shrilled, the sound echoing in her ears. “Oh, my lovely,” she whispered, enchanted by her own work. “What a beautiful creature.”

So, I lost my debit card in December. Since then, I have been finding small random things that were on the card - like this LJ. I don't know yet if I'm going to boot it back up to paid. I might not. I don't know yet. We'll see.

Yesterday was a lovely day spent with argus7hills. He surprised me in bed with a stuffed puppy (so silky-soft!), a giant tea mug, a box of chocolate-covered cherries (yum!) and a card that made me tear up. He's so good to me. Despite all my complaining. :D I adore him. We then played WoW all day - my mage is up to level 33 now! Two more levels, and I will be able to make us some kick-ass bags. And other stuffs.

Today, I am dealing with major sinus pressure - this cold is killing me. But now that Rum has gone out, I need to get cracking on Rites. It's time to start really buckling down. Writers write - it's just what we do. Whether or not we feel like writing. :D I've actually been doing about 500-1000 words a day (except yesterday), which isn't bad, but I'd like to step it up a bit. Attempting to do so this week. Then again, it's a treatment week, so I might not. I'm not sure right now - the headache is blocking a lot of stuff.

We'll see.

Metrics from Saturday:

Starting Count: 3963
Ending Count: 4778
Net Gain: 815

Starting line:
Not just her mentor, Edgar Rothman, the original owner of the house, dead two hundred years before, but his niece Marietta, dead nearly as long, and both of them looked less than pleased.

Ending line:
He noticed then that she was hurt too: blood trickled from a cut hidden somewhere in her blond hair down the side of her cheek, and a bruise was forming on her high cheekbone.

Darling:
Something within Nikki snapped, and dark Power rose up in her, igniting a black fire around her. “He may have been a psychopath, but he had some good ideas,” she snarled, and even Edgar took a step back from her. “One of which is that someone in a box can’t bother you unless you get in the box with them. Would you like me to demonstrate?”

I'm experimenting with being in chat but only looking at the screen after doing 10 minutes of writing. We'll see if that works.

School: First quiz in paralegal and wow, not so good. Thankfully, she said she was most likely dropping the lowest quiz grade. Sunday is study day, seriously. I'm afraid I'm spoiled now - I'm actually having to WORK on this class! Gotta take it more seriously. Luckily, math is braindead.

Personal: Went and had breakfast with my dad today. I love spending time with my father - he and my mother have always been huge supporters of my writing, and he was the one who introduced me to roleplaying at a very early age. (Yes, I was playing D&D when I was 5 - I learned my math skills by counting dice.) We got to talking about Spelljammer, which was part of the D&D world, by way of him asking about what novel I was doing for NaNo, and me telling him about Shanghai. Dad understands my obsession fascination with pirates, and thinks it's a cool concept, and we discussed ships and the various ideas on propulsion, etc. Now I just have to find some of the old Spelljammer modules. We went to 2 used bookstores and looked and puttered and just had a good time.

Work: I'm working nights tonight. 'Nuff said.

Writing: My father was highly amused by the fact that I've been asked if I'm going to write any YA anytime soon. I picked up about 6 YA novels and will be reading them, just to see what they shake loose. Who knows? I could be the next JK Rowling! (Okay, y'all can stop laughing now...)

I'm trying to figure out why I'm having such issues getting Nikki and Jack together in Snow. Tonight, come hell or high water, they are meeting, dammit! I'm alone here as of now (from my team, at least) so I have no excuse. Have ipod, will write, blah, blah, blah... :p

I'm also kind of musing on Rites already. Snow gave me one of the last pieces of the puzzle that is the magical system for my world. I'd wondered what I was missing, and now I just have to reconcile it with everything else. I was going to have Blood Lords be the final part of the triad, but I'm just realizing that it won't work - Justin works Blood magic, and there are Blood Mages on both sides of the Walls. So I need one more type of magic that can coexist within the Walls, and I'll have no Blood Lords. Just Blood Spirits and Blood Mages (because everyone has blood). Hmm. Must figure this out.

More on that later. Now I need to plot.

But the Yankees lost, AGAIN, to the White Sox, and my Red Sox swept BOTH games of the doubleheader today. Current standings: Yankees, 9.5 games back; Toronto, 10 games back; Baltimore and Tampa Bay, tied at 10.5 games back. Not only that, but we're leading the AL with a 28-12 record.

Not only that, but I'm finally figuring out the complete story arc for Seasons and Rites.

I have very yummy white vanilla grapefruit tea.

AND, most importantly, I am having the BEST hair week I have had in a long time.

WEEK.

Life is good.

Ended up with a count of 1414 for the day, which is a good thing. I haven't had a 1k day in a while, and that's depressing.

Metrics for Dark Moon Seasons
Starting line: Once she got Tony to pull that …thing out of him, he would be wide-open. Hers for the taking. How ironic that she had depended on one Mage to discover the way to destroy all of them.

Ending line: “I hope she will, Thomas.” She watched him walk through the doorway. When her office door closed behind him, she said softly, “From Heaven.”

Oh, and we have a working title for the last book! It's tentatively titled Last Rites.

***

ETA: Just checked my word count for the year, and I've cracked 100k! 102,778 words so far this year, to be exact. Go me!