False Dawn.

Sorenan woke at the noise of someone moving in the tent he shared with Marcos. He reached a hand up to the knife he had beneath the folded cloak he used as a pillow on his cot. As he did so, he watched the shadows, searching for the interloper. After a moment, he found them standing near the cot that Marcos was sleeping on. They stood over the unconscious man for a long moment before producing something from beneath their cloak.

Sorenan rolled off the cot and crossed the space between himself and the man with his back to him on cat's feet. Seizing the man's hair and pulling his head back in a violently swift gesture, Sorenan brought his knife up and put it to his prisoner's throat. "One noise and you're dead," he muttered in the man's ear. The would be assassin moved his arm slightly. Sorenan put pressure on the blade and the man went still. "Who sent you?" he demanded. The man he had captured said nothing.

Before them, Marcos had awakened and watched the sight above him. As the man who was going to kill him tried to stealthily position himself to stab Sorenan, Marcos sat up and wrenched the knife out of his hand. The man made an awkward noise of surprise. Sorenan looked at Marcos. "I don't think he has a tongue," he said. Marcos nodded. "Get rid of him?" Sorenan asked. Marcos nodded again.
Sorenan roughly turned himself and his prisoner so that they were facing the entrance of the tent. As he slit the man's throat, Marcos rose to his feet.

Marcos quietly moved to the flap of the tend and looked out. Laying on the ground, lifeless and in pools of their own blood, the guards stared unseeingly up at the sky. It was nearly time for false dawn to break over the horizon. As he looked about the encampment, he could hear the noises of people beginning to stir. "How do you think he got this close?" Marcos said. Sorenan nudged the body of the assassin on the ground with his foot.

"Probably killed one of the foot soldiers and made his way through the camp under false pretense," the mercenary said. He sat down on his cot and picked up his boots. Sorenan turned them over to dump out any insects or small creatures that crawled in during the night. As he shook the boots to make sure they were empty, he listened to Marcos across the tent. It was their eight night on the march. Sorenan was pleasantly surprised by how Marcos took to the rigors of march. Marcos approached the sparse conditions with a calm acceptance that Sorenan had not expected.

As their forces moved towards the sand plain, General Zalaz had constant reports from his underlings. The scouts out ahead of them had sent word that the Temna encampment had been seen. While Sorenan thought that a night time excursion into the camp would have been an excellent way to cut down Temna's numbers, the General and Marcos decided against it. Sorenan was fairly certain that they were going to meet the enemy that day. The air had the charged feeling it did before he engaged foes. He couldn't explain how he knew it was going to happen, only that all the world seemed to take on a sharper edge and more vivid sensations as he drew closer to combat.

With out the assistance of servants, Sorenan put on his armor. When he was finished, he helped Marcos into his own. When they emerged from the tent, the guards who were to relieve the dead men had arrived and were beginning to call for the general. When Sorenan and Marcos emerged unharmed, the guards calmed. "Get rid of the bodies," Sorenan said. The guards acknowledged his order as one of Marcos's servants approached, surprised that the pair were awake early. When the servant spotted the corpses, his expression was one of shock and horror.

The sword bearers of Ashur ignored the servant's expression and went in search of General Zalaz. They found him talking quietly with one of his sergeants. As the black haired man looked over, he rose. "They have found the invasion force," Zalaz said, "Word has been put through the camp that all are to awake. We're going to hit them at daybreak before they have had a chance to gather their wits." Sorenan looked over at Marcos, curious as to what the priest-king and Emperor of Dacia would say.

"The sand plains behind them are going to be rough ground for the chariots to go over," he said. Zalaz nodded. "How are we going to force them to go south?" Marcos asked. Zalaz looked over as a captain was giving orders to one of his men. He watched the pair separate and spread word of his orders to yet more people.

"The plan it to have not enough of them left alive to be worth driving south into the black sands," Zalaz said. Marcos scratched at his jaw. His beard was nothing impressive. While he preferred to keep his face more cleanly shaven, Marcos ignored his growing beard in favor of focusing on making time to plot strategy with Zalaz and Sorenan. "Are you sure that you want to lead the main force forward?" Zalaz said, looking over at the two men at his side.

"Yes," Marcos said, "It is Ashur's will." Zalaz shook his head. He didn't like the idea of Marcos standing on the front line. He had protested against it for the last three days. Marcos, however, refused to acquiesce to Zalaz's concerns. Sorenan said nothing on the matter, deciding that his place was to protect Marcos's back, where ever he stood in the battle.

Author's note: I'm not particularly happy with how this installment came out. I apologize for how rough it is. Try as I may, however, this is the best I can manage. Hopefully next week's installment will be better.

NaNoWriMo Update!

Hello dear Reader!

It has been a long while since I posted. Part of my silence was due to fevered work on book six. Part of it was due to my being sick all last week. It lead to some awkward writing on the manuscript. I think, however, I managed to make sense despite the loopy state I was in. I am not going to worry about that though because the first draft is all about getting the ideas down. Amusingly, I have met the word count goal for NaNoWriMo but I'm only halfway through my plot.

It has been rough work writing these scenes. I have reached a point where the heroes are forced to sit back and watch as things go horribly wrong. It feels bad to write these things, especially in the light of all the horrific things that have happened in the world over the course of last weekend. A friend of mine noted, however, that this simply means that I was more conscious of the horror of what I was writing. While that makes sense, I still feel a bit guilty doing terrible things to my characters right now.

Moving forward, I anticipate completing the first draft of the manuscript around Thanksgiving, if I can keep working on schedule. Since the pressing task of meeting the NaNoWriMo word count is complete, I can relax a little bit and do some more blogging. As a result, I hope to get more work in before I have to get into the whirlwind of finishing up Yule presents for friends and family. Still, I am making progress at a good rate despite the challenges over the last few weeks.

And so it begins.

I have been working on book six for a few weeks now. With the start of NaNoWriMo, I've been a little extra focused on it. It is hard to get good writing time in with small children in the house. The act of disciplining myself to sit at the desk and work while they are at school has been hard for me. Over the last few days, however, I have been making progress. I have just about 10k words to show for about 8 hours of work. My goal is to get my hourly word count higher. Adjusting to the keyboard on this laptop has been a bit more challenging than I thought.

Still, I am at work and trying to get the story written out before the holidays hit in full force. I think the biggest challenge I am facing right now is resisting the temptation to screw around on Youtube and Facebook. Twitter hasn't caught my fancy quite as strongly as the other two. I am sure, however, at some point in this process it will prove as much of a time sink as the others.

Aside from the difficulties of staying on task, I have been slowed down some by the fact that I have to go back through the previous five books to make sure that everything for the scenes and characters match up properly. I think I lost about an hour today to just making sure I had three characters written correctly. I really should have started my note card system with the first book. It would have made this so much easier. I suppose it is something I can do once I get this manuscript finished.

As of this evening, my word count is standing at 20210. I may be able to eek out another one thousand words if I stay focused until it is time for me to head to bed. I lost count how many cups of coffee I had today. Maybe I'll start keeping a tally of that. Until tomorrow, I wish everyone taking on NaNoWriMo and NaBloPoMo the best of luck. Remember, you're not competing with anyone but yourself. And the word count is less important than telling the story.

Break in Posting.

Hi everyone,

I didn't want to do this, but I am going to have to take a break from posting. There is a lot of family stuff going on (like dentist appointments) that will be keeping me from my regular post schedule for the remainder of the week. I plan to be back with new material next Sunday.

In the meantime, I hope everyone has a wonderful week.

Craft of Writing: Pushing through the block.

At some point in time, every writer encounters the dreaded writer's block. Some will give up at this point and wait for the inspiration to return. This can result in a delay that lasts anything from a few days to a few years, in severe cases. Not every writer, however, will run up the white flag when they hit this challenge.

Writing based off of inspiration is romanticized a lot in the media. They present the image of a passionate author penning their magnum opus in a fevered frenzy of inspiration. And then there is the tragic figure of the author who is languishing in dismay because their muse has abandoned them (which is a fancy way to describe writer's block). For some reason, this dichotomy has really captured the imagination of the world. It leaves aspiring authors with the impression that writing is an all or nothing affair.

Writer's block, however, is not a problem that will kill your beloved project. It is the lack of discipline to continue writing even when you're not feeling passionate about it that will destroy your dreams. The hardest part of writing is not editing or revisions. (Though they are truly rough at times, I will admit.) The hardest part, in my opinion, is sitting in the chair and writing when you have no heart invested in the story.

This kind of grueling affair is not for the faint of heart. Writing when there is no romance felt for the project is exhausting and emotionally draining. Some of us find ourselves heavily doubting our adequacy when we are in that stage of work. This is where giving yourself permission to write badly is important. It doesn't matter how good what you write is. All that matters is that you write.

Forcing yourself to write is really hard to do. In my case, it takes a lot of coffee and a big playlist of music to keep me focused. Some one else has different tricks to keep themselves focused on their work. But maintaining focus and discipline is what get you through. A 500 word essay can be just as hard to write as a 50k manuscript when you're not feeling any passion towards it.

Making yourself sit in the chair and do your work, however, is what gets you to your goal. It takes dogged determination and effort to push through writer's block. It takes being full of 'piss and vinegar' (as my Grandfather called it) to ignore the nice little story that the media sells us that we should waste away waiting for our inspiration to come back. Some people talk about having a muse. They describe writer's block as the muse abandoning them. The ones who push through the writer's block are the ones who grab that muse and chain them to the desk. The muse may not talk to you, but you force them to stay present.

Sure, it is not as fun as when the muse talks to you. But, sometimes, forcing your muse to stay with you results in the muse telling you stuff that is even better than what comes in the fever of inspiration. Roll up your shirt sleeves, grab your cup of coffee, your favorite writing tool, and get to it, folks. That story is waiting for you to push on through.

Food of Evandar: Journey Bread

The journey bread that is carried by travelers is based upon hardtack. Some journey bread had spices mixed into it prior to baking. It was generally reserved for the upper class. The hardtack that was carried for nobles was impressed with the crest of their house. The recipe given on The American Table is an excellent example of how hardtack is made. Just as in the history of our world, journey bread has been in use since antiquity.

Where hardtack is generally a pale cream color with a bit of browning from baking, journey bread is the color of cornbread. In place of sugar that is used in many recipes, honey is added. In the case of the recipe from The American Table, I would add a few tablespoons of liquid honey and reduce the amount of water added so that the dough was still the proper texture. The spices added varied from region to region.

Perhaps the most common is fireweed. The less potent spices imported from other regions are much like those of our world. Thus, cinnamon is known by the wealthy of Evandar, for example. While one may not want to put the combination of powdered chili pepper and cinnamon into their journey bread, cinnamon by itself would work well. Ginger is also used. Ginger is a popular spice in Evandar among the nobles and the wealthy. Folklore declares it to be an aphrodisiac, which is part of the reason why it is so popular. To have your journey bread take on the color of Evandari journey bread, you could replace a quantity of flour with cornmeal. Or you could add a little bit of food dye.

Journey bread is eaten like hardtack. It is generally not very flavorful and a fairly unpleasant meal. A heavy cracker-like bread, journey bread is usually used as a trencher to eat other foods on top of. This softens the journey bread and makes it more palatable.

Delayed Post.

I'm sorry folks. I've got the beginnings of a migraine going on. I've been struggling all day to get the brain power to post something here. It's not working out so well. I'll be posting the recommendations stuff this weekend. (Provided the migraine doesn't last two days like the last one did.)