Whew! November’s over and I put another 50,000 words behind me. 50,032, to be exact, finishing with six fat minutes to spare.
Not of all of those words were worth reading again, by any stretch. Still, it was an interesting exercise this year, one I seemed hell-bent to make more difficult for myself. Here are a few of the elements that made this novel different:
- Very few characters – Four, to be exact, and one of them dies around chapter two or so. The one who made it possible for the remaining characters to communicate is kidnapped, leaving two characters for the rest of the way, and they can only talk to each other on special occasions. Since I’m a guy who lives for dialog, that made things tough.
- A dying world – bad things have happened, and the world has been mortally wounded. The oceans are drying up, or draining, or something. Even where there is still water to be found, Life (big-L life, the ecosystem as a whole) seems to have given up.
- The remaining two characters were constructed – One was built to assassinate wizards. The other was built to protect a wizard from assassins. The wizards are all long gone, but their creations live on.
- Guaranteed Furry audience – Wolf is pretty cool, and not someone who just looks like a wild animal much of the time; some of my favorite parts of the story are when she shows her true wolfish nature.
Will I pick up where I left off and fill out the story? Let’s just say there are a couple of other stories on top of this one in the to-do pile.
