Chelsea Gaither's Blog, page 36

why some days I accomplish very little

She's like a fuzzy warm limpet.

The Wolf Gift--chapter 29

Well, that was "fun". Let's not do that again sometime.

(Seriously. Please. If you have an issue something I said, either correct me or please just leave me alone. I do not do shit on purpose. I am not healthy. I do not handle this shit very well.)

(Please. It's not fun anymore.)

SO. Where were we?

Right.

So after meeting with his drug dealer Felix Nideck, Ruben goes home and...uh...

Reuben had felt an acute longing for them all, for the cozy house, for the convivial life he’d left behind, but other than that it had been perfect: too many people for an interrogation or an intervention.

1. I am probably too inebriated to correctly untangle that sentence.

2. STOP CONFIRMING MY BIAS IN THE TEXT. If Ruben thinks that his family might be planning an intervention, it usually means he damn well needs one and he knows it on some level. WEREWOLVES SHOULD NOT BE A DRUG ALLEGORY. ESPECIALLY NOT WHEN THE WOLF/DRUG IS BEING PUSHED AS A GOOD THING.

I am imagining a drug addict reading this book and getting that kind of subconsious "ALL IS WELL" vibe this book is giving off, and I am cringing.

Oh, but we take time to establish that Celeste was relieved that Ruben has a new girlfriend already.


Because having Ruben dump her via infidelity and text message would be bad, blog readers. It might make Mr. Murder-you-in-your-sleep look a little amoral.

Rosy also makes her first technically onscreen apperance. I say technically because, while she throws her arms around the Pube Wolf's neck, she gets no description whatsoever. Her race is still unconfirmed.

Mom mentions that the Russian Paris Doctor will be by tonight, which gaurentees that Ruben will be out of here well before dessert and cognac. (Though I wish he'd stick around. I'd like to know what Rice considers to be upscale booze.)

It appears that this trip is just to get all of Ruben's things out of his parent's house.

Because he still lived with his parents before he got the World's Perfect Mansion.

...Ruben needs to die already.

Ah, but Dr. Russia Paris shows up anyway. Dr. Akim Jaska is, I assume, white, and very old, and imposingly sinister. Of course he hates Ruben on sight and makes no effort to make friends.

This bothers me. Evil is most effective when it is friendly. Con artists and predators will be your best friend immediately. You shouldn't be afraid of the people who are hostile. You should be afraid of the people who are actively friendly.

Apparently Dr. Jaska has been here often enough for Rosy to know his "Usual Drink".

I really hope Rosy has bartender training. Because unless that drink is "Scotch on the rocks", that thing is probably not going to be very good.

(You can't fuck up scotch on the rocks. You can, however, ruin a perfectly good martini. Usually by not making a real martini because most people think that means vodka shaken with ice, with a random olive thrown in because James Bond. That is not a real martini. And do not get me started on the Thousand Ways there are to royally fuck up an Old Fashioned.)

Apparently Dr. Jaska reeks of evil.

I'm telling you. It's Axe body spray. However, rather than having a potentially plot interesting confrontation, Ruben and Laura head off into the sunset. Literally.

And of course on the ride home Ruben finds random victims designed to pull at the heart strings and justify the horrific murders Ruben is about to commit. Because, you know, cracking open someone's skull and drinking their blood and brains is completely justified if they were just bad enough. It's not like we have laws against cruel and unusual punishment or anything....

So Ruben kills the attackers in the usual bloodbath and then realizes--OH NOES!--he has bitten the surviving victim, a sixteen year old boy. Now, why these boys were attacked, why these attackers were here, anything that could be actual character development is not established prior to right now. Meanwhile, lights are coming on and Ruben has to beat feat before he gets his ass handed to him by police.

I swear, the corner in this city must be really tired of cleaning up chewed up body parts.

He makes it back to the car with Laura and they drive off yet again. End of chapter.

So I guess the plot from now on will be "Dealing with Ruben's Fuck Ups" won't it? 

General Statement because of Reasons

So I have about ten twitter referrals in my stats this morning. I've been seeing them crop up for the last couple of days but today it fucking exploded.

Which means either I did something good, or have been particularly stupid, or somebody's back yet again, and I am just that much fun as a lolcow. As I can only find one of those twitter links, I'm pretty confident I know who it is.

But I want to make one thing perfectly fucking clear before things continue. Alright? Alright.

I suck at writing.

I know this. This was made abundantly clear to me last year. I do not self publish because I think that the publishing world has somehow missed my wonderful leet skillz. I do it because I know I am just that bad. I don't say this on the blog very often because people go nuts, but I do feel that way. If I thought for even two seconds that I had even a slim slender prayer of making it in trade publishing, I would not have self published.

Those "Why I self published" posts are not about how much trade publishing sucks. They are about me and where my head was at last year, and why even though I sell pathetic amounts of books I am so happy I could squeal. I think trade publishing is awesome, I think that's where every writer should try to go, that they should keep trying until they break, I think agents are awesome, I would still love to have one.

 I also think that I don't have a chance in hell of ever getting one.

As I said when I started reviewing LKH's books, John Norman, Hubbard and Laurel K. Hamilton are awful, but they are writing gods compared to me. Their quality of writing is something I need to aspire to and that is not a compliment of them. I flog books because it's fun and my tiny tiny tiny circle of readers like it. I don't do it because I think I'm better then them. I am not. If I were, I would be really published by now.

So if you think pointing out how much I suck is something cool? Yeah, you're basically pointing at an orange and saying "Look at that! It's orange. Do you think it KNOWS it is orange? Let's point that out."

The goddamn orange knows what color it is. I know I suck.

Anyway, stick around. Enjoy reading if you want to. Point and laugh if you don't enjoy. Just...yeah, don't give me more credit than I deserve. I'm an idiot, but even I can read. I get it. The books suck. HARD. That's why I stopped wasting publishing people's time with my nonsense. And that's why all of my readers are awesome awesome people. They're patient enough to put up with me.
 

The Wolf Gift--Chapter 28

And the sequel to This Found Thing is finally live. 

Why yes. That is a bible reference in the title of a fantasy book. I could go on a long screed about playing with the concepts of economics and how I realized halfway through writing that story that everybody on the Isles are completely fucking boned, but I'd much rather you buy and read the book.

 So. How long does it take for Ruben to make me want to punch him?

Reuben, dressed in a white cashmere turtleneck sweater and his favorite Brooks Brothers double-breasted blazer, was shown into the conference room where the meeting with Felix’s illegitimate son would soon take place.

White. Cashmere. Sweater.

My hobby is spinning and knitting. Lace, specifically, because it's math I can do (Sixteen reps of a twenty-stitch, sixty row pattern complete with double yarn-overs and the dreaded seven-stitch nup? And the pattern, due to being left on the bottom of my purse for a few hours, is now in a state of mud-colored incoherance? No problem. Basic multiplication, which is not significantly different from charting out a pi shawl? FUCK.) and because the results are pretty. I have a short list of things I would like to play with before I die. One pound of cashmere fiber is HIGH on the list. I think the only thing higher is actual goat down from the Orenburg reigon of Russia.

I do not know why, but reducing some of the most awesome fiber in the history of textiles to "Cool thing to randomly name-drop to make my character awesome" makes me want to hurt Rubes so very very badly.

Ruben and Simon sit in the conference room, while Laura is escorted someplace girly, with coffee. They discuss what Felix 2.0 might do to claim the estate, but this conversation is summerized. What isn't summerized, however, is the conversation about how hot Ruben looks with long hair, and how many ladies he must be driving crazy.

These are two grown-ass men discussing legal business. KILL WITH FIRE.

Felix's lawyer enters. Felix enters. It is clear that Felix is the original Felix, and that the role of the vampire Armand in this series is going to be played by Felix fucking Nideck, because he is immediately praised as being handsome and perfect and generous and please fucking gag me.

I just realized that the only reason I could stand this praise bullshit in Interview with a Vampire and The Vampire Lestat/Queen of the Damned is because it fit with the narrators. Louis had a severe case of Stockholm Syndrome and his time with Lestat colored his perception of the world. Lestat was a fucking egomaniac and it fit for him to, for example, praise his mother in overly sexualized and almost worshipful tones, and then call her a fucking idiot for not playing his game his way. Because we were seeing the world through his eyes, and that meant his egomania got on everything and made it all icky. It was annoying as fuck, but it fit and it developed Lestat's character extremely well. And it REALLY helped that Lestat was the more-or-less villian of Interview, because it meant you didn't trust him through the other two books.

This is a third person narrative. We are not that deep inside the pube wolf's head. Lestat trying to force his view of the universe down our throat was one thing. It was expected. Ruben's got no business trying to convince me he's right. He's not telling this story and he doesn't know I'm here.

And of course, unlike Marrok who envied Ruben and tried to kill him, Felix is all genuinely pleased. He genuinely is. It's genuine.

That stopped looking like a word about six chapters ago.

First thing we do is make it clear Felix doesn't want the house.

There is a thing in writing where you take any given situation and you make it worse, and this adds tension. It's possible to take it too far, but in decent moderation it can help. Anne Rice seems to have decided that the exact opposite tactic--take any given situation and remove every possible aspect of tension ever--is the better move.

Felix then tells Ruben that he is beautiful.

Oh GOD I wish Felix were a villian. He'd be fucking Moriarty. All urbane and nice and kind and shit, and then he'd rip your head off and use it as his bowling ball, and make sure to leave a dish of your blood out for his baby kittens because he thinks they are just precious. He'd have a copy of Chicken Soup for the Soul sitting on top of his plans for blowing up the orphanage so that whenever the idea of dead children makes him feel a little depressed he can get a nice little pick me up.

That won't happen. But it'd be SO nice.

So Felix piles the compliments on and Ruben just drinks it up and thinks "Hey maybe he won't kill me" while the lawyers look at each other and are all like "What the  fuck is going on here?" and they discuss the Mesopotamian tablets and Felix's secret writing--which means Ruben found diaries and sciencey things written in code he can't break--and he hands Felix a letter they found on Marrok and spend the next several pages establishing that Marrok is dead and that Ruben killed him, and that Marrok acted alone because the perfect perfection that is Felix Nideck would never have tried to kill the perfect perfection of perfectness that is Ruben. No, the idea had to originate in the cranium of the ONLY FUCKING BROWN PERSON in this book.

Sorry. I just...had to bring that up again.

The lawyers are still staring all like "WTF", and I've decided they are the best characters in this scene.

Ruben brings up the word "Chrism" randomly and he and Felix look at each other for a while. Then Ruben gushes about his obsession with Felix, and rather than being skeeved out like a normal human Felix is all complimented and nice about it. He basically is going "TEACH ME ALL THE SECRETS BECAUSE I NEED TO KNOW" and Felix is all sitting there nodding sagely. And the lawyers are clearing their throats because I guess whatever their hourly retainer is, it's not big enough for this shit.

Meanwhile the cloak-and-dagger infodumping continues, and not only is there nothing of note here it's so effing boring. And juvenile. It's like watching  two teenagers try to talk about sex in front of their parents, in code.

Ruben offers to give Felix back his stuff.

The lawyers go apeshit.

Felix nods sagely. He quotes things, then leaves. Simon, Ruben's lawyer, starts insisting that Ruben go see the Russian Paris Doctor that his mom found. Ruben sits in his chair and thinks about victory. He goes to find Laura, finds that Felix is talking to Laura, decides that all this means nobody is going to try to kill them ever again, and they decide that they have to go out to lunch.

They sit in the restaurant and Ruben feels proud of Laura because when she met Felix, she looked pretty.

I'm serious.

When he thought again of Felix standing there, holding Laura’s hand and talking to her, he could have cried. He was quietly proud of how attractive she had been in that moment, in her gray wool pants and sweater, sleek and groomed and shining. She’d worn her white hair tied at the nape of her neck with a ribbon as was her custom, and she’d given a beaming smile to Felix as he’d withdrawn.

And while they are eating lunch and he's looking over Laura, Celeste texts him with an "SOS ARE WE STILL DATING" and Ruben basically breaks up with her via text messages while oggling his new girlfriend over pasta.

Ruben. The hero of this story. Has just dumped his old girlfriend via text message because he couldn't be bothered to stop undressing his new girlfriend with his eyes. 

Of course, to justify this, Celeste is already banging Ruben's best friend Mort.

Everybody in this novel, with the possible exception of Marrok, is a terrible excuse for a human being.

He and Laura discuss turning Laura into a werewolf. Ruben has what is basically a religious experiance while remembering what talking to Felix was like. The chapter ends.

If you can point out one fucking issue that got resolved this chapter other than Celeste getting the shaft, I will eat my wine glass.

The Next Gray Prince Book

It is in publishing and should be live LAAAAATE tonight. Will post when it is there.

GOD this book killed me. I'd love to know what it is about the GP books that mean they eat my lunch.

Why I did it, Part the sixth

"Signing up" of course, did not mean "Actually publishing things". In reality I signed up, clicked my way through all their contracts (Which I read and researched very carefully) and then closed all the windows and had a good long cry.

And then went back to researching KDP. And contracts. And self publishing.

I'd run into the name Amanda Hocking long before I got to this point, usually mentioned with a roll of the eyes and a "Can you believe this shit?" attitude. This time I found her posts about actually DOING self publishing and paid attention to what happened early on. She published a book and it sold. She published another book and it sold a little more. She kept doing this until she started making thousand-dollar days.

A light went on.

I researched a few more successful self publishers.

I cried a lot more.

Thing was, I didn't want to do this. Everything I had researched, everyone I had talked to, EVERYTHING told me self-publishing was the biggest mistake an author could make. You just couldn't succeed at that game. It wasn't worth it.

But.

The one thing the April incident had shown me was I was not going to succeed. I wanted an advocate, you see. I wanted somebody to help me, to guide me, to be something between a friend and a business partner. I wanted somebody else to tap me on the shoulder and say "Hey. You're not just good enough. You're incredible."

And I wasn't going to get that.

I was not going to get the six figure book deal. I was not going to get the movie. I was not going to get the big fan base.

I believed that self-publishing would be losing everything. Agents do not want to talk to self published writers. Publishers do not want to deal with our awful track records. Do that, I believed, and you're dead in the water. Not just now, but forever. Not just with this book project, but with all of them.

But that's where I was. Burned out. Done. I was at the point where I had nothing, absolutely nothing left to lose. Why not throw it all away? Following the rules hadn't gotten me anywhere. What if we started breaking them?

But it's losing everything, my sick little brain countered. 

And there was another factor. If there is a God (and obviously I believe there is) then he'd just dragged me through the hardest experience of my life, and I had to figure out why. How, if this had quit being my test and become God's, could the April Incident factor into anything?

I got to go to church again at the end of May. This was twice in two months. Almost a record.

This time the sermon was on Elijah.

Elijah is not quite Baby's First Bible Book. We're talking third grade reading material now, with the bits about human sacrifice and cutting expunged as being too awful for little eyes. But it's still an incredibly well traversed part of the scriptures. How well known is this book? The other two major figures in it are King Ahab and Queen Jezebel.

Today's fare was the part where Elijah and the priests of Baal have their final show down. The Priests of Baal number in the hundreds. There's just one Elijah. There are two huge piles of rock and wood and cow AKA Alters, and whoever gets theirs lit first has the real God, they get to live and they get to make the rain come. Because, OH YEAH, it hasn't fucking rained in Israel for three years.

Oh, but the twist is that God has to light the fire on his own. From the sky.

Baal's priests line up. They pray. Nothing happens. They pray more. More nothing happens. They start cutting themselves. Elijah starts saying things like "Shout louder, maybe Baal's taking a piss" (I swear to God, that is in the Bible) and the Priests of Baal give up. It's now Elijah's turn to make fire from the sky. He turns to his servants, jerks a thumb at the altar, and says "Pour water on it."

They do.

"Pour more water on it."

They do. Again.

"Great. Pour more water on it."

Now the wood and rocks and cow are all soaking wet. Elijah gets on his knees and prays for God to light the pile of wet stuff on fire, and so much fire comes that the fucking ground disappears. And like most bible stories, it ends with Elijah killing all the priests of Baal because Game of Thrones has got nothing on the Old Testament.

All I remember is the bible story because, again, I am so far out of it I probably need to be in some inpatient program. But I start thinking: Pour water on it.

It's God's test. Not mine. And the one thing I know about God is that when he does something, he waits. He waits until everyone else has tried and failed. He waits until their cousins try. He waits until chance is gone, fate has given up, and destiny's in Denver...and then, just to make it obvious that this is no human agency, that there is no way any human being could have made this work (and thus, take the credit for making it happen), he pours water on it.

A lot of water.

And then he makes it happen.

It's now pushing June of '12, and I realize that I can neither give up nor justify continuing to try for trade publishing. That door has been profoundly shut, by both my personal beliefs and my sincerely fucked up mind. That leaves just one way. Self Publishing. Which in my mindset at the time wasn't pouring water on the altar. It was putting the altar under the fucking ocean.

So. Could I stop writing?

No.

Could I try submitting again?

Not just no, but HELL no.

Fine. Then that left me one choice: Pour water on it.

I went home and I wrote out The Plan.

The Wolf Gift--chapter 27

The next Gray Prince Book. Yeah. We're almost done. Here is the cover:



I am too tired right now to enthuse muchly. It'll probably be out sometime tomorrow. Wednesday at the latest.

I promise. I promise I promise I promise.


So I've decided the Wolf Gift is actually Anne Rice's experiment with non-linear storytelling, and that it's not going to well for her. When we last left Ruben he was heading home after not telling his mother he was a werewolf for several pages. NOW he's getting an e-mail from his lawyer telling him he has bad news that might be good news.

BUT FIRST LET'S TALK ABOUT PLANTS.

 He and Laura had supper in the conservatory, at the new marble-top table. They were in a grove of banana palms and small ficus. And the sight of the orchid trees inclining towards each other, and dripping those gorgeous pinkish-purple blossoms, filled him with happiness.

RUBEN HAS A FICUS. WE NEED TO KNOW THIS BLOG READERS. WE REALLY REALLY NEED TO KNOW.

We go on about the plants and the conservatory and that GODDAMN FUCKING HOUSE and how Laura loves Ruben loves Laura loves lovey love love love, and I'm very sorry but I do not come to werewolf fiction with a male lead for pink pony princess fluff. Also, going from HE MAN EATS PEOPLE to "You know what we need in our love garden? A ficus" is less "tonal shift" and more "tonal tectonic plate motion"

They decide to search the house because there's a secret door floor they can't get into. They bring an axe with them, wander around for a few hours, and then give up. Ruben goes downstairs to wait for his change to show up.

I take it back. Let's talk about the fucking ficus.

Ruben wants the change, but he doesn't want it. He thinks he brought it on by his own will, but experimenting with that is for suckers. He and Laura go outside. There are floodlamps they can't turn on.

YO. PUBE WOLF. DO. SOMETHING.

 They look at the trees. They aren't just any trees, Blog-readers. They are lovable trees.

These were lovable trees, Reuben said, because you could climb them, look at their low inviting limbs.

Bestselling book by a bestselling author. We have pube wolves and loveable trees.

And a ficus.

We get the species name for every tree in the front yard, and half of the ground cover because Laura, in case we don't get it by now, is a naturalist. Ruben thinks about calling a roofing company to get onto the roof, because the alternative is shapeshifting and climbing onto the roof on his own, which would mean leaving Laura alone and that might be bad. She's a fragile little female who can't protect herself. They go back inside.

DO SOMETHING. DOOOOOOOO SOOOOOOOOMEEEEEEEEETHIIIIIIIIIIIIING.

Simon, Ruben's lawyer calls, and Ruben RUNS TO THE PHONE. YES! WE'RE DOING THINGS!

So Simon got this call from another lawyer that he trusts because of Reasons, and it turns out that a potential heir to Felix Nideck's fortune has turned up, and it's Felix's formerly unknown illegitimate son, named Felix!

I knew this was coming in chapter one, guys. I can't decide if Rice wanted us to expect this plot twist, or if she thought this would actually qualify as a plot twist, and I also can't decide which senario is more depressing.

So Simon infodumps about Felix Nideck, making it REALLY FUCKING CLEAR that Felix 2.0 is actually Felix the first back from the ether, and then adds that Felix REALLY wants to meet Ruben.

 Ruben sets up the meeting with Felix at a hotel.

...with a ficus.

The lawyer continues talking about how weird it is that somebody named Felix Nideck showed up to get all of Felix Nideck's effects and how uncanny the resemblence is. Ruben interrups to ask Simon not to tell his mom about this.

“Reuben, I don’t discuss your intimate financial affairs with your mother unless you have given me your express permission to do so,” said Simon. 

This was not true at all.

Yeah. Hey, Ruben? Your lawyer is not respecting attourney client privelage. Get a new fucking lawyer. And sue this one for ditto, because you have rights.

 Simon says that Felix 2.0 probably wants money, and that Ruben should shut up and "Let him download, as the kids say today."

No, no, Anne. They don't.

 So Ruben hangs up and tells Laura that Felix Nideck wants to talk with him. Laura nods, holds up all the pictures of "distinguished gentlemen" lying around the house and says that all their names come from old werewolf tales.

We already covered this. Only this time we not only get the names of the werewolf stories, we get the publishing dates. 

ALL the publishing dates. For about six different stories.

And then Laura plays leapfrog with logic until she declares that the evidence indicates werewolves are immortal.

ANNE. STOP IT.

So they go over how Felix probably wants his things, and he probably wants to kill Ruben, and oh, no, what shall they do? And apparently the answer is "sit and alternate between staring at the fire, and staring at Laura in her nightgown."

I think this book's biggest problem is there are no stakes. Nobody is in danger. There are no questions being answered. No clocks are ticking. Nobody has any problems beyond the vague "I turn into a wolf" sort. Most of Ruben's problems are caused by Ruben having seriously bad impulse control issues, and also his murdering people. And EVERY time something that could be a life-or-death issue is introduced, it is solved WITHIN that chapter. NOTHING IS AT RISK. I AM NOT INTERESTED.

I've been re-reading Eddings, because my babbling about him last week made me remember how much I fucking love his books, and yep, the writing is just as bad as I remember, and yep, it's the same fucking plot with the same fucking characters, and there is a ton of misogyny and racism, and yet the books are readable and enjoyable because shit fucking happens. And not only does shit happen, you can summerize the plot stakes in five sentences or less. IE here is the Eleniad:

The Queen of Elenia has been poisoned so that a powerful member of the Church of Chryellos can install a puppet government and get himself elected as that religion's pope. Serephrenia, the High Priestess of a Pagan Goddess, manages to keep the Queen alive via her own life-force and that of twelve members of the Queen's guard. Sparhawk, the Queen's Champion, has to go on a quest to find the Magical McGuffin that will save her before the life-force runs out, the twelve die, and the bad guy becomes pope.

TRY TO DO THAT WITH THE WOLF GIFT, I FUCKING DARE YOU.

(and again: Just because I like Eddings doesn't mean I think that's a good thing. It's just that those books have a plot and this one doesn't)

Meanwhile back in the World's Perfect Mansion, Ruben gets bored with sitting around and screws Laura for a while. And then he hands her the wood axe and goes off to trigger his change by will and climb onto the roof.

Ruben finds a trap door. He goes inside a random room. It takes three pages to accomplish this because Anne Rice thinks we need the leaves described in minute detail. He finds a secret door to the rest of the house, grabs Laura, turns on the lights, and wanders around a dusty attic for a while. Apparently it was once outfitted as some kind of scientific lab.

They find Marrok's footprints and decide that he camped out here once in a while.

...With a ficus.

They also find all of Felix Nideck's missing journals, and all of the Mesopotamian tablets that vanished several chapters ago. I am sure you were all dying to know if the Mesopotamian tablets were okay. You may rest assured that they are.

They wander around and find all  the secret doors.

They discuss sciency things for a while, and what the lab might mean. (hint: Nada)

Ruben gets sudden claustrophobia, so they go back to sitting in front of the fire and talking about Felix.

 Laura wonders out loud if she will ever get to have sex with Human!Ruben. Wolf!Ruben starts playing tonsil-hockey with her.

I will never be clean again.

Oh, and he discovers that he can now shapeshift at will...but he waits until after the sex. End of chapter.

NEVER BE CLEAN. NEVER AGAIN.

(...ficus)

Why I did it--part the fifth

Yeah, this next part is still hard to write. And again: Dream Agent did nothing wrong. Hurting my feels is not a crime. In my opinion they said exactly what I needed to hear, and I am glad I heard it.

That doesn't make it any less painful, but again, pain does not =bad. Or that the other person is wrong. This isn't intended to be a judgement call on anything, or anyone. It's just my story.

SO.

The other half of what I'd won was a thirty-minute phone call with Dream Agent. I realized very quickly that I'd have to schedule it for a day when I was not working, because there was no way in fuck I could function at work after having had that conversation. I didn't give a damn about the conversation itself. Nothing Dream Agent or I said to each other could fix this. It just meant revisiting the colossal failure this so-called "miracle" had turned into. I didn't understand it. How could God have let things get so far, get so close, and then have it fail? Why couldn't he have just let me lose the auction again? It had sucked last year but it hadn't broken me. THIS, however, had snapped me in two.

Of course, the phone call fell through twice, and wound up being on a day when, yes indeed, I was going to have to go to work that night. I could not explain this to Dream Agent because "I am emotionally devastated and don't think I can talk to you, work a few hours later and not get fired" isn't exactly the most professional thing to say. So I wound up having it on a day when I'd be handling other people's food and alcohol.

I did not get fired, but I also don't remember a goddamn thing I did that night. Or a whole lot about that phone call. I do remember almost getting fired two days later when I started sobbing in front of my boss while doing my paperwork and she thought it was because of something she had said (Well, she triggered it, but a kitten with a sad would have gotten me going by that point)

 The phone call. I remember sitting there watching my phone and repeating to myself, you must not cry. You must not get emotional. YOU MUST NOT CRY GODDAMN IT. I remember staring at the clock across the room and watching the minute hand tick through my allotted thirty minutes. The one thing I DO remember is that they asked me at one point if I had any questions about what they'd told me, and other than one minor plot related point that I'd been told would murder the manuscript (actually, it was alright) I didn't, because, and I quote "You told me what I needed to hear."

It was ten minutes into the phone call. I don't remember one goddamn thing for the next twenty until we hung up the phones, except that I was absolutely positive if I took ten seconds to think up an actual, good question, I'd start sobbing again and that wouldn't be okay. And then the call was over, and I spent the next two hours curled up on our sofa just bawling because I knew it was over.

I couldn't do it again. Not when I knew now, positively, from a professional POV that my writing had no value whatsoever. This could no longer be avoided. The best of the very best had judged me and found me hideously wanting. They had been very polite about it. There was still no escaping it.

So. Was I ready to give up writing?

The answer was a resounding "Not just no, but HELL no," though it felt a little like it was being screamed by Easy Company during the Battle of the Bulge. I couldn't stop writing. But I couldn't justify writing if nobody was going to read it.

Okay, let's try on trade publishers. Let's go directly to the source. I started gathering information on them. Daw. Tor. Baen. Anyplace and everyplace that would accept fantasy submissions without an agent. I started looking at those submission guidelines. I started retailoring my work to meet their standards.

Then, out of curiosity, I started checking their real response times. Not what's posted on their websites, which was a survivable six months to a year. What authors were really having to wait for.

And it turns out to be one to two years.

And that is when the bottom fell out. Not during the rejection cycle. Not when The Dream Agent told me the best thing I could do was give up. Nope.

It was when I realized that not only had I gone through two years of utter hell, if I wanted to have a shot with a different project I'd have to go through the entire thing all over again.

It would take six to ten years for the manuscript to work its way through the publishers. It was effectively DOA. It would take another two years for me to have anything else to send in. For the same damned thing. The same cycle of rejection, tears, and suicidal misery. The same wondering if it's good enough this time. No? How about now? No? How about...now?

I couldn't do it. I could do rejection. I could do another April. What I could NOT do, however, was another ten years of it. Yes, there is always a chance of acceptance, but chance was all it was.

The math was simple. Attempting trade publishing had made me intensely suicidal. With that aspect factored into the equation, that probable ten years worth of work went from my having an ambition to my staring down the barrel of a gun.

There's a saying you hear a lot in chemical abuse recovery: The definition of insanity is repeating the same behavior over and over, expecting a different result.

 I'd spent two years being absolutely fucking insane. 

It was time to come up with a new plan, one that didn't involve repetition.

I signed up for Kindle Direct Publishing not two weeks after the phone call with The Agent.  

The Wolf Gift--chapter 26

Weekends are like the Split Shift That Never Ends for me. Especially now that we have (drumroll please) NO other employees my boss is willing to trust with the split shift jobs. I would love for this to be boasting. That would mean I would get actual time off. Like a Sunday. I would give my left leg for a Sunday.

I got enough of today off to do Father's Day, though. Dad and I saw Man of Steel.

FUCK. YES. Also: THE LEXCORP LOGO HALFWAY THROUGH CLIMATIC FIGHT SCENE: IS THAT A PROMISE WARNER BROTHERS? 

So where were we?

...right. Pube Wolf.

So now we're going to connect that chapter to something, right? Right?

...No. We're having a conversation with Grace, Ruben's mom.

Hey, have any events since the Finding Of Laura had anything to do with each other? We've had the killing of the mountain lion, the killing of Marrok, the observation of his body (to, you know, kill any possible tension with the police plot) the stuff with Ruben's brother, and now a whole lovely chapter of disconnected bits and pieces. I've done this when I'm writing too. It's called "Flailing".

I am a shitty self published writer.

Anne Rice makes kajillions of dollars and has two plus movies.

One of us ought to know better.

So Grace immediately reads Rubes the riot act for ignoring his oh-so-close-it's-perfect family for weeks. Ruben apologizes in that "Will you shut up now?" Way of the ASSHOLE, and they start talking about his medical records.

He needs to see a doctor. He doesn't want to see a doctor. He needs to see a doctor. He doesn't want to see a doctor. He NEEDS--yeah, you get it. Eventually the Russian Doctor From Paris is mentioned. His name is Akim Jaska.

Ruben. Laura. Grace. Jim. Rosy. Akim. Leroy. Felix. 

Anybody ELSE see the problem? Bad guy=vaguely foreign sounding name. Because GOD FORBID we introduce a little social and moral ambiguity in a novel where the main character EATS PEOPLE.  No. We have to know who is bad right away, and the best way to do that is to give a character a vaguely scarily foreign name.

And then they start talking about the werewolf. And how the werewolf has probably infected Ruben with something. And about how awful Ruben's thinly-veiled praise of the werewolf is. Ruben asks if Grace thinks he's the werewolf, and Grace says "OH NO HONEY" in that "THIS IS NOT PART OF THE PLOT" way, and my jaw is on the fucking desk at this point because what does this add to the book?

 But here's what it boils down to: Grace knows her son is infected with something that is adversely effecting every test she's tried to preform. Something else, whose tests are degrading exactly the same way, is killing people in a horrible manner. She is scared that Ruben will go crazy and kill people, she's turned over every medical rock she can think of to find a specialist in this department, and now she's trying to get Ruben to see him....and Ruben has dropped off the face of the earth as far as she is concerned, save for his writing, which is basically "I heart the Man-Wolf".

Grace is every parent who has ever had to sit through those "HEROIN FOR THE WIN" conversations addicts like to have. She's also 100% in the right here. Every instinct she's got as both a doctor and a parent is screaming her son needs help. She's found the best solution she has given the information Ruben has trailed out to her. How does the book treat her?

She stood there in the doorway, and for the first time in his life he saw her as a tiny figure, a vulnerable figure, weak and frightened and overwhelmed— his beautiful mother who could save lives every day of her life.

Reduced to something beautiful and fragile, because her concern for Ruben's life choices have completely and utterly wrecked her. HEY RUBEN: YOU ARE WHY SHE IS "FRIGHTENED AND OVERWHELMED" and she sure as fucking fuck is fucked is not "vulnerable" and "weak".

And you know what? I'm going to review this book from here on out that werewolf=drugs. Because JESUS CHRIST is that a hard paralelle to ignore.

Ruben realizes that he can't interact with his family anymore with changing his behavior--ie sobering up. Instead, he drives off to Laura, who like every other enabler in the history of things offers him comfort and sympathy, rather than saying "Yeah, but maybe you've taken this killing people thing a little too far" and dropping heavy hints that if he doesn't shape up, she's gone too. They go back to the unsupervised pocket universe that is the World's Perfect Mansion and the chapter ends.

Meanwhile Ruben's family and loved ones are probably organizing an intervention.

State of the CW+ BOOK SAMPLE

First off...weekend reading. Buy my shit plz.

Second: Print book. For sale. No obligation to buy, just take a good look at my awesome skills. (Seriously. You do not have to buy. Just look at it.) 

So I bit the vanity bullet and bought the license for AWESOME trailer music so that I can make my own book trailer.

Because I can. Because it didn't cost that much and it's rooted less in "I want to sell more books" and more in "OH MY GOD TRAILERS ARE AWSOME"

Because they are. I love movie trailers. I love them almost more than I love movies themselves. I hate going to movies with my Dad, because he insists that showing up fifteen minutes after the movie starts is fine (technically it is because that's usually when a movie actually starts) and I want to cry because TRAILERS! I want to know what's coming next! I want to hear the awesome bass! I want to go "Squee I read that book!" I want to go "OMG THAT'S TWO STEPS FROM HELL I OWN THAT ALBUM"


So yeah. Self publishing is a compromise. You agree that you're not going to get a lot of the toys the big kids play with (real editors, real artists, book designers, marketing, bookstores) but you take what you can get. And damn it, it might be dumb but  I want a book trailer.

Now I just need to listen to it until I'm sick of it and write out the script.

And then figure out what I'm going to animate. And how. 

This ought to go well.

And finally, last but not least, the second Gray Prince book. I'm working on the cover. I make no promises on time, and I have to shove the release date for the next project back from July 4th to July 17th. But it will come out.

Here is your book sample. Enjoy it.

Dawn’s blue light rippled through skeletal evergreens. Accin, Leythorne thought, and good for eating. He needed to remember these things. Snow still lay here and there, clinging to ground already ripe with spring. The first spring greens were already starting to grow.. The fern-like tendrils of yan root, the spikey tiered growth of pescal. Neither of these were ready for eating yet, or so Leythorne’s new woodsman had explained. Gerswir Wirhanson, Gerswir Hunter. The Freeholders clung to their job titles more than they did their family’s names. It is because the Isles only ever had one Miller. One Huntsman. One Boatswain. One slave-keeper. And the rest were either heirs in apprenticeship, or slaves born and bred. This was quite an unhappy Lordship he had inherited. And it would likely become even more unhappy if he could not find a way to give it up.And to hear Gerswir speak, we could have chosen a worse time to rebel, but there weren’t many other choices. The Keep had chosen Leythorne as his lord. His first act as Lord of the Gray Isles—and naively, he had assumed it would also be his last—had been to set the slaves free. He had assumed that once freed, they would desire nothing more than to govern themselves, and he could find some nice, quiet part of the island and brood for a while. That they would understand how and when to farm, and plant crops, and mine ore, and do the thousands of other jobs needed to thrive.As you ought to have magically understood your own power, the nature of your new blood. Have they given out awards for nativity before? It had been less than two weeks since he had awakened in a body not his own.  He had been born mortal, and had been a Knight of the Faerie King before the accident that switched his mind with that of his enemy’s. These shabby bones belonged to Jennal Faer, would be king, patricide and murderer, and Haron would have rather burned himself alive than reside in them another minute…but no one was offering him a choice.They needed him.Oh, things had gone well, at first. The Keep had been purified during those last, desperate hours. The dungeons were not pleasant, but they were now clean and in better repair. With the doors open, and blankets laid on the cold pallets and colder stone floors, the former slaves had a place to sleep. The food had held out for a week, and the people had finally understood. The slave pens were gone. There would be no more beatings. No more families broken to satiate the master’s cruelty. But there would be hunger and want aplenty, if Leythorne did not come up with a solution fast.I’m a soldier, first and always. I wasn’t made to figure provisioning…and even there, that came from farms already grown. How do you build a city, no, a civilization, from scratch? They were running out of food. The people needed clothes. They needed a better place to sleep than a cold marble dungeon. People wanted to know what they should do next. And again and again, the question Leythorne felt least qualified to answer: What do we pay those who wish to work? And what about those who don’t?And where is work, if it is wanted?Gerswir lead the gathering party, though Leythorne followed close behind. Alys and Pardal Norestrain were nearer still. The Freeholders traced their lineage, and carried their titles in their names; the former slaves kept a heritage far older. Leythorne had spent these last few weeks speaking with them. Norestrain was no family name. It was the name of a city in a kingdom long gone. Devoured by the Mistlord, its people delivered over to the Duskin Lords in chains, it was nothing but ash and an old family name, and a story passed from generation to generation of white towers, and the song of bells, and fields of ripe red wheat trampled under invading feet. Footsteps crunched through silent snow. Leythorne’s gathering teams had grown in the weeks following the Isle’s liberation. Now they were nearly two hundred strong, and where once they all had gathered and hunted, lain traps and dug roots, now they were divided by job. Having the extra hands was an incredible luxury. A clump of ripe wintergrain sat beneath the branches of a sleeping arhat tree. Three days ago Leythorne would have gathered it himself. Now he left it for the next team, and followed the footsteps of a hawl-hind. We cannot kill this one, he thought, as he moved quietly through the brush. Gerswir had tested them all on their woodsmanship before choosing who would be allowed to hunt. Leythorne and Pardal had been selected after much debate; Alys had been in from the start. The golden huntress moved like a feather on the wind. They needed the hawl-hind for more than meat. They needed them to plow in a few weeks’ time. They needed the coarse wool along their backs, the soft down on their bellies. They needed them for breeding. But even Leythorne felt slightly cheated, thinking of all that fine meat on the hoof, and he’d been allowed some of the salted meat, rather than the smoked fish everyone else had to endure. There were four thousand freed slaves and over five hundred Freeholders sheltered by the Keep’s walls. They had eaten their way through the Keep’s store of real meat in less than one day. Gerswir made a sharp fist, the signal to stop.They had nets for catching game, and bows. Leythorne had yet to get the hang of catching game with a net. He’d be more useful setting snares and herding prey towards it. Alys, though, had caught two hares that he’d seen. A flick of wrist, a swirl of knotted twine, and another bird would be hampered. Their main game today, though, were hares and hawl. The massive deer had obvious uses, but Leythorne had always believed the hares were rodents. Perhaps good for eating, but cultivation of the damned things seemed wrong. Gerswir had simply held up one of the captured bucks by the neck ruff. Short ears, puffy cheeks, coats soft as down and whiter than snow. “It’s the hair, master Leythorne. It’ll come out in puffs all year round. A skilled spinner won’t even need to card it. Hawl-hair has better strength, but nothing is ever this soft. It’ll be good for trade…should we get that far.” Now they tracked a hawl-herd across the snow. The hoof-tracks were peculiar, three toed. Leythorne had caught a few glimpses of long legs and longer neck through the brush. With no direct sunlight, this unworldly light gave the creatures a celestial aura. They were like deer, Leythorne decided, only deer the size of horses. He almost stumbled over the deepening brush. The hunt was, sadly, the last thing on his mind. How can I protect these islands? We haven’t any soldiers. We haven’t the supplies to resist a protracted siege. We have one ship, and that is Harian’s prototype. If we are attacked by the Duskin—and I cannot imagine any letting us exist free for long,; they will come soon—then we will have no option but to cut the ropes leading to the docks. The Gray Isles floated like great mountains high above the churning Mistland waters. It was said that the Sidhe scholars who had once lived here had raised the island when the Mist arrived…only to perish, one by one, when the Mist turned its attention from the Deep to the sky. The Keep, in this version of history, had once been a great center of learning. If this was true, the Duskin had remade it to suit themselves. A network of rope bridges and floating docks connected the islands to the waters below. And those waters were quickly becoming their key source of food. There did not seem to be enough game on this island to feed them all.Which meant the isles were vulnerable.We shall have to cut the ropes leading to the docks below. That will buy us some time, but only some. And I was counting on the sea to get us through spring. Ah, the never-ending list of problems. There were four thousand battered souls struggling to find some semblance of normal, something most of them didn’t even know. They needed to work. He needed to motivate them to work. But they’re used to the whip. They’re only just now learning to meet each other’s eyes. What motivation can I use that won’t eventually lead back to the slave pens? I cannot force them to work…and yet we all desperately need them to. Crime was bad and getting worse. Food was bad. Housing people in the dungeons was a makeshift solution at best, and could only be temporary. And every one, every last surviving soul, had been irreparably scarred by the past. For the past four mornings Leythorne had awakened with shaking hands, mouth dry, body soaked in sweat. He had insisted on taking the hunting party out, in part to show the other people that their lord did not shirk his own employ…but also to clear his head. Find a new idea. Find a solution.He had not found one yet.I should have stayed behind. There are things we must do. The hawl broke cover before he could take that thought any further. Six of them, dark shadows in the lightening morning haze. Doe-like eyes flashed white, winter coats gleamed in a sudden golden ray of sunlight. They crossed near enough to touch, their warmth playing over faces and skin, and then, in a thunder of long legs and longer necks, they were gone. Only the waving brush testified they had even been there. Gerswir gave the call, a high-pitched whoo-hoo like a nighthawk swooping down. Then, as they had planned earlier, he moved left with half the group. The other half moved right, pacing around the fleeing herd. Leythorne followed the hunter, until Gerswir shook his head. He motioned downward. Stay, his hands seemed to say, and then he made a spreading motion. That’s when Leythorne realized all the others had dropped their nets. Alys, too, had stayed behind. The girl had improved since her time in the Duskin Lord’s harem. She had filled out a bit, though she was still a slender little thing. Her skin was a rich golden brown, her eyes flashed like tiger quartz, and the hair beneath her scarf was amber. “I think they are going to herd them around,” she said. “They’re going to send them to us.”He nodded. The high rock walls around them would, he saw, act like a funnel. Under Gerswir’s skilled direction, the hawl would be forced back to this place. He scanned the brush for a good place to set his net.A low rumble. The sound of snow under hoof. A seventh hawl broke cover just as the light finally broke over the ground. Soft orange dawn light spread across the snowbound branches, caught in the gleaming drops of snowmelt, and illuminated the magnificence of the hawl buck as it leapt a fallen tree. Black head, black socks, the rest of its body pure snow white, and it sported magnificent antlers. Each must be as thick as his wrist near the head. It bellowed when it spotted them, reeling away with whites shining at the edge of its deep black eyes. Alys moved like lightening flashing, heaving her net over the head. It tangled in the antlers, hung in the hawl-buck’s eyes. She tossed this end to Leythorne. The buck yanked hard against the net, almost jerking its captor off his feet. Leythorne’s grip held firm. Alys threw his net, now, and gripped the fine network of ropes. She dropped to one knee, pulling with her body weight, and Leythorne followed her lead. Mushy snow seeped into the seams of his leather breeches. Breath like white smoke from the hawl-buck’s mouth, from their mouths. Touch of warm sunlight now, dawn breaking the silent blue-world. The hawl-buck’s knees bent towards the ground, eyes rolling in surrender. Alys met his eyes, the start of a smile on her copper-toned lips. Yes. He thought, not sure why. The warmth of morning curled around them like a comforting touch. And then the buck yanked its head hard to the left, ripping the net out of his hands and sending Alys into the nearest tree.Don’t get distracted, he thought, capturing his own net once more. Breathless and coughing, Alys had never let go of hers. She hauled down, forcing the buck’s head to twist awkwardly.Leythorne drew his sword and sank it deep into his half of the nets, then gripped Alys’ net just above her hands and lent his strength to hers. She let go and grabbed for her own weapon. “It’s too small. Your knife,” Leythorne added. “Grab the harness!”They’d each been given them before they left the keep, black leather straps rolled in oiled fabric. She had it out with a flick, snapped around the neck with the pop of leather on skin. The latch had been spelled. The free end melted into the rest of the leather as if it had been made in one piece. Alys threw the other end over the upper tree branches and then pulled. The buck slammed hard against the tree. She hastily handed the strap off to Leythorne and leapt out of the buck’s reach. Its hooves and horns, he noted, could probably have gored both of them to death.There was blood on the hawl’s side. Five deep rents in the hide’s white perfection. He passed his hand over it, and wondered what this herd of hawl had been running from. Bushes rustled to his right. Quickly, he tied the harness off on a tree root and yanked his sword free of the ground. He turned, shouting a warning at Alys.And the great cat broke through the bushes with a roar. Majestic and lethal, it leapt towards the girl.
“DUSKIN!” The word rang through the hall, bringing Bennatus Serasen to his feet. Father God damn it all, he thought, to all the hells, and half the heavens. He’d only just sat down. Was it too much to ask for a little rest? He’d begun to hope that they’d gotten all the monsters, either killed during the Purification or imprisoned in the deeper places within the Keep. Apparently not. Armed men and women rushed past. And not just the volunteer guard but the hall-workers, the housemaids, those where were only here for a meal. There were knives, swords, wood axes and bows clenched tightly in whitening fists. He spotted one lass with a fireplace poker.You do not forget the touch of their lash, he thought, not even after so many days.But Leythorne had given him one instruction before leaving on the gathering team. Blood must not be shed in these halls. Bennatus knew why. The Keep was alive, a thing of living magic. Leythorne’s power had cleared it of centuries of evil, but a little violence, a little spilled blood was all it would take to reawaken the old hungers. No. The blasted creature must live…at least long enough to drag it outside. He reached the main doors, beaten brass with an expanse of hills and snow embossed on its surface. Yesterday they had been plain iron, the day before, wood and brass bars. The Keep was trying on new things, doors as if they were hats, window shapes as if they were shoes. This set was imposing, and the Duskin looked like a roach about to be crushed. There were certainly enough fists and boots volunteering for the job. Bennatus pushed through a half-circle of angry words and knives. “Shed no blood!” He cried. “No blood!”Metal echoed off the floor. And then silence. Bennatus reached the crowd’s buzzing heart.It wasn’t just the doors, Ben decided. The Duskin was small for its kind. Skin dark as pitch; either not powerful, or very young. Bennatus was inclined towards the latter. There weren’t a lot of scars across that hairy hide. It wore the dark summer fur of a crag cat, smoke blackened mail, and weapons lay scattered on the floor, well out of its reach. It knelt on one knee, head bowed.It surrendered, Ben thought. The man standing over him had sword raised for the kill.Bennatus caught his arm. Dark eyes met his pale blue ones; a snarl of rage curled the mortal’s lips. “Not in the Keep,” he hissed. Slowly the man’s eyes cleared, shock registered. He lowered his arm quickly and stepped away. It had been emphasized to all of them, after the purification: No killing, no fighting, and no cruelty in the Keep. Not unless they wanted their only shelter to turn back to its blood-thirsty ways. The slaves had almost feared the Keep as much as the old Masters. The magic users in this assembly—Bennatus, Leythorne, and Mailen Graymane, and anyone with a touch of Fairy blood—could feel the old stones lapping up the darkness, drinking it in full. Some of it—pointless anger, childish fights—faded as quickly as it came, a shallow kind of evil. But a murder would linger, and too much blood had already seeped into these walls.Bennatus lowered his own blade and tucked it under the Duskin’s chin. It sizzled, silver marking a line upon its neck.“Look at me,” Bennatus demanded, and the Duskin did so. “This is a sharp blade.” He whispered. “It will cut through your neck in a heartbeat. Why are you in the Keep?”Frantic red eyes swiveled this way and that. Deformities were common with the Duskin; this one had three, two close together on its left, and a patch where its right eye should be. Ben drew the patch aside. A well-formed third eye squinted against the bright light. “I come,” it said, “I come with a warning, sire. Please, I beg you, do not kill me!” it shivered against the knife.“I’ve worn your scars for centuries. You’d best give me a reason not to. Why were you not killed with the others?”“I am watchman. I live in the far towers. I did not know the Keep was taken until fair yesterday, when no relief came. Please, Master.” It dropped its head towards the tile.Silence, an unpleasant muttering, and the whisper of steel still in the sheath. The undercurrent of planned murder. The interest of the Keep, Ben thought, was almost overwhelming.“Has anyone here felt the lash of this one?” Bennatus called to the gathering crowd. There must have been fifty people in the hall by now.  No one said yes. “Still, I wager no one has felt your protections, either.”The Duskin just shivered.“You said a warning, boy?” Bennatus said. “Aye. The old Lord bid us keep watch for sail or force, or Deep creature, or dark Mist, for the Mistlord’s wrath is against us. I didn’t know what else to do, when I saw the sails come yesterday—”“Sails?” The high, clear voice was familiar. Isa, former headwoman of the old Lord’s harem, pushed through to the front. Her warm face paled. “You’ve seen black sails?”“Aye. For two days I thought it could have been the glows. It happens, sire. Wrights at cavort in the mist, or such, they glow. And sometimes there’s a will-o-the-wisp or Boggart. But the mist also glows when it hits the sails, and the Deep shines with the passage of boats. I was not sure until yesterday that it was sails…and not until today that it is here they come for. I would have left the warning by, if I were not sure. I have love for my own life…and I know it’s rightly yours for taking, but if the Mistlord is commin’, sir, my life is spent anyhow. A warnin’ might spare it. The sails would not.” All three eyes closed, and the Duskin lowered its head.“Black sails?” Bennatus looked to Isa.“The old Lord would speak of them,” Isa said. Her words were clipped, and Bennatus pushed no further. “They mark Duskin ships.” “There are twelve of them that I saw last even. I think I saw the flag of trader, but we’ve never had so many at once. Milord, they will know the Old Lord fell. It would have echoed through the Mist, for something so old to die. If it is the Mistlord’s will, they will take the island back. And they may try anyway.”“And you would like that, wouldn’t you? To have us in your chains again.” Isa hissed. Her fists clenched as if on a blade of her own. “You’d find that passing fair.”Bennatus stilled her hand. “Wait,” he whispered. “Your life would be forfeit, you say?” He said, to the creature.“Because I stay in the watchtower, and I don’t fight for the old ways. I know there’s no place for me in this Keep, no matter who it calls master.” It hesitated. “I’d find your Lord kinder than the Mist and its black sails. Even if he means to take my life, he is good. He’d take it quick.”Bennatus jerked his head at one of the volunteers nearby. “Go get master Leythorne. Tell him to come quickly.”The young boy nodded, and he ran with speed.