Since I'm only about 5 miles from the village of Sleepy Hollow, I took a drive through it at twilight, just to get a glimpse of the place. It's a twisty, hilly part of the Hudson River Valley and has a long, long cemetery bordering the 9. Row after row of tombstones marching up a hillside, half hidden by trees and kept from taking over the road by a long stone and wrought iron fence. I've now paid homage to Washington Irving...even though I never knew I wanted to.
On the drive down, I shifted to the 17 at Binghamton. This not only kept me out of Pennsylvania and the inevitable roadwork I keep running into in that state, it's a much lovelier drive. Towering hills flocked with green trees. Wide shallow streams whispering around rocks and stones and islands of mud and grass. I'm driving a Chrysler 200 and it's an okay car, but it feels cramped and scowly. And the ventilation is pathetic; if you don't use the AC you have to have the windows all the way down, and that messes with gas mileage as much as anything else. But it has cruise.
So along the drive, I gave free rein to Jake and we started working out what "The Vanishing of Owen Taylor" is all about...and he reminded me of his own description of himself, once. It's when he pulls Antony back from getting lost in evil in his quest for revenge (in volume 2 of RIHC6) -- he tells of when his father lived in Iran and raised a wolf pup, then got tired of it. But no matter how badly he treated that wolf or how much he ignored it, the creature was always ecstatic to see him...because that wolf saw him as part of its pack. And to a wolf, nothing matters more than their pack...and their mate.
And that told me everything I needed to know about OT. Jake's grandmother and his uncle were his pack. Now his grandmother's dead and his uncle's missing, and he needs to find out what happened to someone who was more important to him than anyone else. Until Tone became his mate. And Matt joined their pack. I get the sense wild and crazy Dion's part of it, too, now...but not sure exactly how that's going to work in. And then there's Lemm, who's still enigmatic to me.
I dunno...I'm probably being goofy, here. But it's given me the spark to tell the story, again. And I've been working on it in my head for hours. Now I'm going through what I've written to see who's what, where, how, and when...and then will focus on the story...use it in my search for direction.
And now who should come tapping at my brain but Gabrielle, from "Blood Angel". She's got her own story to tell...and Tristan would love to expand upon his...
I think Brendan now understands why I'm postponing "Place of Safety"; I need...absolutely need...to live in Derry for a year before I continue working on his story to understand the society I'll be writing about, and I won't be able to do that for a while. But when someone goes so far as to criticize the way I describe snow in LD, a story without a tenth of the weight I want for POS, that's silly. I want all future shots fired at me to be over something important instead of nonsensical.
Don't ask for much, do I?
On the drive down, I shifted to the 17 at Binghamton. This not only kept me out of Pennsylvania and the inevitable roadwork I keep running into in that state, it's a much lovelier drive. Towering hills flocked with green trees. Wide shallow streams whispering around rocks and stones and islands of mud and grass. I'm driving a Chrysler 200 and it's an okay car, but it feels cramped and scowly. And the ventilation is pathetic; if you don't use the AC you have to have the windows all the way down, and that messes with gas mileage as much as anything else. But it has cruise.
So along the drive, I gave free rein to Jake and we started working out what "The Vanishing of Owen Taylor" is all about...and he reminded me of his own description of himself, once. It's when he pulls Antony back from getting lost in evil in his quest for revenge (in volume 2 of RIHC6) -- he tells of when his father lived in Iran and raised a wolf pup, then got tired of it. But no matter how badly he treated that wolf or how much he ignored it, the creature was always ecstatic to see him...because that wolf saw him as part of its pack. And to a wolf, nothing matters more than their pack...and their mate.
And that told me everything I needed to know about OT. Jake's grandmother and his uncle were his pack. Now his grandmother's dead and his uncle's missing, and he needs to find out what happened to someone who was more important to him than anyone else. Until Tone became his mate. And Matt joined their pack. I get the sense wild and crazy Dion's part of it, too, now...but not sure exactly how that's going to work in. And then there's Lemm, who's still enigmatic to me.
I dunno...I'm probably being goofy, here. But it's given me the spark to tell the story, again. And I've been working on it in my head for hours. Now I'm going through what I've written to see who's what, where, how, and when...and then will focus on the story...use it in my search for direction.
And now who should come tapping at my brain but Gabrielle, from "Blood Angel". She's got her own story to tell...and Tristan would love to expand upon his...
I think Brendan now understands why I'm postponing "Place of Safety"; I need...absolutely need...to live in Derry for a year before I continue working on his story to understand the society I'll be writing about, and I won't be able to do that for a while. But when someone goes so far as to criticize the way I describe snow in LD, a story without a tenth of the weight I want for POS, that's silly. I want all future shots fired at me to be over something important instead of nonsensical.
Don't ask for much, do I?
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