Okay. Got some rather serious news today that may change certain things for me in the near future. I’m sorry to be so vaguebooky about it but I’m still processing this. It’s not horrible — nobody’s sick or dying, the bank isn’t about to foreclose, nothing like that. It’s just one of those curve balls that life throws at you out of the blue. And as was pointed out, this could turn out to be an amazing opportunity if it’s handled right. I’m choosing to think positive, because otherwise I will dive headfirst into a large bad of peanut M&Ms and nobody needs to see that.

On the plus side, I’m just about at the midpoint of the book and Darius just dropped some news on Matthias that I didn’t even know but explains a lot about Danäe’s behavior. Yeah, sometimes my characters take the plot and run with it, usually making the story much better in the process. But this little wrinkle is going to cause problems when everyone gets to Hellaspont. Oh, well, throwing the kitchen sink at your characters is how you make good drama.

Today’s stats:

Started With: 36,178 words
Wrote: 3,024 words
Total word count: 39,202 words
What else did you do today, Nicola: Cat chores, laundry, put clothes away, cleaned the bathroom, gave reassurances that everything would be all right, made some jewelry for the Etsy store, went to sleep a bit early.

Writing Tips: If you are lucky, your characters will occasionally say, “Oh, by the way, did you know this?” and dump an amazing subplot in your lap. This can be tricky because said subplot does not always fit in with your outline, which is why you should try and keep your outline as flexible as possible. How you first envision the story is not necessarily how it winds up on the page, and that’s not always a bad thing. Storm Season was supposed to be a fast, fun story about a guy who gets seduced by twin sea gods. It somehow transmuted into an fantasy ecothriller that spawned a six book series. Apparently I like adding complexity to my sex scenes. Who knew?