The usual bullshit...

I wound up scrapping everything I wrote on Leonides, today, and some of yesterday's work. It just wasn't working. I tried the whole idea of, Just get the first draft done then rewrite, but no matter how much sense that makes to me, I can't do it. My characters shut me down, and Leon was not really happy with where we were going. Well...when it comes right down to it, he's the one who counts, since he's telling the story...so when he says to stop, I stop.

Something that is building in this book is how Leon is part of a superior breed of vampire known as the Blood Angel. The whole trope about garlic and sunlight and holy water doesn't apply to them. They don't even have to be invited into a home in order to enter, not like Prior Pious, does. But it's just one bloodline, and only if they are turned does it take them over.

Pious is the one who turned Leon's sister, Gabrielle, not realizing what she was. He regrets it and warns his monks against doing the same with any others in Leon's family, to be safe. Only things go wrong, of course, and now Pious wants to contain the damage. Of course it's too late...which may mean killing Leon's brother and other sister.

Now, I already have most of Gabrielle's story in screenplay format, and I'm debating how much of it to include in Leonides. She's caught up in getting a troubled young Jazz musician to agree to become a vampire with her, even as the lad's stepmother fights her using Santeria. Takes place in the aftermath of Katrina, for the most part. 

Leon is gay. Never even wanted to be with a woman, and I'm debating having him make Pious into one of his boys. The man was 30 when turned while Leon was twenty-three, but its the status that counts. And there will be about a thousand years to play with, as well as a completely different makeup from Gabrielle. Maybe even a bit of a contest over the same guy. We'll see.

I got Seamus O'Reilly's autobiography Did Ye Year Mammy Died so will be reading that on top of Eamonn McCann's books. Both show the sarcastic, brutal humor of the Derry people, a flavor I need to catch in Brendan's telling of his story. That is really going to be fun to write. 

BTW, I can never have any character in APoS refer to their mother as mammy, not as an American writer. Its connotations are just not good.