A complete and utter bust.

I got up late this morning, worked through lunch for the EDJ, and endured three monsters at basketball practice tonight.  I never even opened my file.

And I’m okay with that, because even walking the track in the upper level of the basketball court, I had Story on mind.  I worked through the next scene.  I wish I had time to write it tonight, but hopefully I’ll dream it and be even better prepared to write in the morning.

I did get some contest reading done tonight, so that’s good.  And exercise.

Phase 2 nagging will just have to continue tomorrow. 

*Staggers with weariness*

Phase 1 nagging complete.  Still have Phase 2 to go.  *dies*  *laughs*

I had a wonderful time chatting with Kait tonight.  Hopefully we can do that again soon.  I don’t sign on to IM very often because whoa, can I lose a lot of time chatting.  But it was worth it to talk shop for a while.   Then I needed to look up something from Survive My Fire re: Keldari ritual, and damn it all to the Three Hells if I didn’t read the whole thing again.  Ah, Jalan, the stone warrior, and Chanda the White, such a vicious dragon.

But I finally crawled back into Story with Shannari and Mykal to finish the deed.  It needs much work later, but the bones are down.  Moving on.

Today: 1,059

NaNo: 86,382

Snippet:  I think this is hilarious knowing exactly how Shannari got that old mark.  Talk about an arse competition. 

Mykal rolled so hard and fast the air slammed out of her.  Dazed, she instinctively tried to throw him off.  The White Dragon clawed inside her, furious that the Black had pinned her, but he wouldn’t be denied.  He trapped her flat on her stomach with a hand behind her head and the weight of his shoulders against her thighs.

“What a beauty,” he purred, rubbing his cheek against the old scar in her buttock.  “Who gave this to you?  Your young Red?”

“Nay,” Dharman replied, his voice soft but his tone ringing.  “If it were my mark, my rahke would be in your heart.”

“My Khul.”  Lady above, the Keldari was heavy and strong.  Her ribs ached.  “Get off me, Mykal.”

“Make me.”  He swiped his tongue over the scar and she twitched, struggling helplessly beneath him.  “Did you mark the horse king the same way?”

“Yes.”  Irritated, she tried to push him away with jealousy.  “As I did Gregar and Sal.”

He laughed and gripped her teasingly.  “Ah, you like a man’s backside.” 

“Only truly remarkable ones,” she threw back at him.

“Now, now, there’s no need to insult your First Red.  I’m sure he’s not pleased that you find him lacking.”

She tried to kick the bastard but she could get her heel back far enough.  “I never said such a thing!” 

“Then why doesn’t he wear your mark on his buttock?  Is he that unremarkable?  He looks big enough to impress you, but then again, looks are often deceiving.”

Fury darkened the Silver Lake inside her.  “Don’t try to make him jealous.  I love him without question.”

“I know, brightheart.”  The sudden despair and longing aching in his voice filled her eyes with tears.  “You can’t help but love him.”

When he sank his teeth hard into that muscle, her emotions crashed from sympathy back to rage.  Twisting in his grip, she swiped at his throat.  Blood welled in long, vicious stripes across his neck and shoulder. 

Her nails glistened, long and curved like dragon talons. 

“Dharman!”  She screamed.  “I killed him!”

Oh Vulkar help me, this is the big one.  It’s the one last hurrah before all hell breaks loose.  It’s the emotional payoff two characters have been working toward for 80K words, and all the associated heaven and agony.  I don’t know how long it’s going to take me to get through this scene.  Iyeh, nagging is involved.  Again.  Sigh.  Violent nagging, even.  (Thanks to Soleil for coining that one.)  I have to make sure I don’t take the easy way out.  This relationship is messy, complicated, and a really bad idea for lots of reasons.

Good stuff.  *fans self*

Today: 2,655

NaNo Total:  85,323

Snippet:  this comes shortly after yesterday’s, so I’m actually quite a ways from this scene already, but it’s a good piece and it’s fairly clean.  Okay, mostly, at least compared to today’s pages.

“That oil is a weapon,” she accused.

“Indeed?”  Mykal arched his brow.  “I intended it to be a gift, nothing more.”

“A gift that burned my skin, that made me tear at my mate and wrestle, roll, fight…”  Her face burned and she averted her gaze.  Lady above, she’d been inflamed with lust, completely out of control, and Rhaekhar had not fared much better.

“Iyeh,” Mykal drawled.  “My oil makes you burn like a dragon in rut.”

“Then I want nothing of it.”

“You don’t wish to taste my blood and wallow upon my dragon as you promised when I agreed to come with you?  I assure you, he’s more than eager to Dance the Blades with your claws and teeth.  You won’t need your Reds to pin me with their knives in order to do as you wish.”

Lady help her, she could envision it only too clearly.  Dragons hissing and clawing at one another, necks twining, teeth raking, wings and tails thrashing each other into submission.  Swallowing hard, she forced that image away.  “That is your idea of a bath?  How do any of your people survive, then?”

He laughed softly.  “Not all are affected by the oil so strongly, brightheart.  You are White.  I am Black.  We’re naturally drawn to each other.  We fight, and if we don’t kill each other, we mate each other into a stupor.  Even then, if one isn’t wrestled into submission, they might both end up dead.  In the wilds of Keldar, it’s not unusual to follow signs of dragons in rut only to find their carcasses roasting in the sun.  Dragons mate with violence and blood and Fire, and we Black and White pairs feel it all the more.”

“You said you have no Fire.”

“Oh, I burn, brightheart, but not with flame to destroy my enemies.  I burn for you.”  He let his lids hang heavy and sultry over his eyes and flickered his gaze at her Blood.  He dropped his hands to his trousers and loosened them so the black material slid down his thighs to puddle on the tile.  “Red is much safer for you than Black.” 

A vicious rumble rolled out of Dharman’s chest and he stood, eyes blazing, muscles bunched.  She touched his arm lightly and he quivered but didn’t break eye contact with the other man. 

Mykal stood silent, his gaze daring her to examine him and find him lacking.  Lean and deceptively slender, he wasn’t as tall as Dharman.  The least of her Blood likely outweighed him by half a stone or more.  Yet there was an aura of coiled power in his stance and the still controlled way he stood.  In a flash, he would strike, as deadly as his tribe’s namesake.  His skin was darker than Gregar’s creamy caffe skin, like rich, oiled mahogany.  Sweeping down his back to his calves, his ink black hair was longer than Sal’s.

Her Caffe Blood huffed beneath his breath and thought very hard about shaving the Keldari’s head with an extremely dull rahke.

“May I have my oil?”  Mykal lowered his head.  Not to be submissive, oh, no.  To ensure his hair slipped forward over his shoulder, drawing her eye down his body again.  Not an ounce of fat softened him.  He might as well have been carved from dusky marble.  “It will cauterize my wounds and cleanse me.  I would not lie with you as a sweaty, dirty savage, Your Majesty.”

“You won’t lie with her at all,” Dharman retorted.

Mykal inclined his head even further, bending slightly at the waist.  “I believe she has already made her choice, my friend.”

Lady help her, she had.  From the first moment the Black Dragon invited her to join him on the ridge above the salty lake beneath a full moon, she’d been intrigued.

:Entrapped, more likely.:  Dharman glared at the man but grudgingly sat back on the bench beside her.  :Have a care, na’lanna.  This dragon’s bite is as poisonous as his fire.:

She sighed.  “Give him his bag.”

I was hoping to finish in 40 days.  Such a biblical deadline.  🙂  Yet I’m not going to make it.  I’ll be lucky to finish by Christmas.

I started making a list of projects for 2009, and I had to resuscitate myself.  It’s pretty scary.  I really needed to have the Mayan story done this year, but I’m not going to make that either.  SIIIIIIIIGH.  I did my best, but it’s just not going to happen.

That’s okay.  I’ve written well over 200K this year, finished 2 full length novels (counting Return which isn’t exactly “finished” but will be), revised another from 49K to 70K and polished it for submission, and made serious inroads on a third single title revision.  Not to mention editor revisions and promo on everything else.  It’s been a good year.

Maybe, maybe not.  *winks*

Today, I continued messing around with Mykal.  He wants to Dance the Blades very, very badly with Shannari, but she’s not quite sure about him yet.  The more she learns, the more she realizes she should run as far and fast as possible, but of course, Shannari dal’Dainari never ran from anything, least of all a Black Dragon.  Right?  *snickers*

Today: 2,128

NaNo: 82,668

Snippet:  Some hints about who…or what…Mykal really is.

“You knew me as blackheart long before you knew my Keldari name.”

The emphasis he put on Keldari sent a chill shivering down her spine.  “What other names might I know you as?”

His head cocked, intensifying her alarm.  A hungry dragon would look at its fleeing dinner in such a way, relishing the coming chase.  “You likely won’t believe me, but I don’t know.”  He shrugged and spread his arms open, palms up.  “Names, places, people, so many are merely mists that disappear with the dawn.” 

Frowning, she watched him carefully, seeking any sign of duplicity.  His bond radiated waves of heat and longing, but the dragon snarled at her touch, red eyes baleful in the darkness.  “Are you saying you personally remember living in other lands, as other people?”

He loosened the ties holding the loose trousers on his lean hips.  “Sands blow in me, storms that blend one memory into another, one life into another.  I know myself as Mykal tal’Mamba, but I also as clearly know I wasn’t this man until recently.  His life is now mine.  His memories are mine and mine are his, but I have memories of many such lives.” 

Confusion and doubt must surely be written on her face.  She’d never heard such a thing.  People died and went to Our Blessed Lady’s embrace, or to Vulkar’s Clouds as the Sha’Kae al’Dan called it, or they fell into endless damnation.  They weren’t spit back out with memories of other lives to try again.  Once swallowed by Shadow, that soul was lost forever, or so she’d been taught.  Was Mykal claiming he sought redemption of some sort?

He scooped a handful of water and let it trickle through his fingers. “If my life were sand, then it would be composed of a multitude of pebbles, some large, some small, bright crystal and red mixed with others as dark as night, but together, it is sand and nothing but dust before the winds of time and the merciless heat of an unforgiving sun.  So am I together Mykal.”

Dread clutched her heart in dragon talons despite the man disrobing for her.  She couldn’t even concentrate on his bronzed upper body, the numerous wounds that had left dried rivers and streams of blood.  “What happened to him before you…?” 

Killed him?  Stole his life?

What are you?

Whew, the logistics of this relationship are going to KILL me.   

I finally finished this scene, but it literally took off and on all day.  I went searching through my playlist to come up with some new music.  I still love Nickelback, but I needed something more.  I ended up using Music of the Night and Nessun Dorma by Paul Potts.  Man, his voice gives me chills, and that’s exactly what I needed for this scene. 

I’ve got two alphas circling each other, trying to decide if they can work together.  Or maybe they should just kill each other and save themselves the trouble.  The only problem, of course, is dealing with her broken heart later, and so the uneasy pacing continues.  This is the true “Dancing the Blades” that must happen, not the challenge with rahke and scimitar.

Today:  1,937

NaNo:  80,540!!  Yeehaw.  But where is THE END?  Nowhere in sight, I say.  Sigh.

Snippet:  Oooh, hard one.  There’s not much at all that I can share, but this is exactly what I mean about loving to watch the afterglow fade only to realize that everything is much, much worse than before. 

Mykal hadn’t broken her skin, not even when they’d all been vulnerable, and he’d endured pain to give her pleasure.  The mighty dragon had taken a position of weakness, on his back, throat and belly exposed.  Even with her delicate throat in his jaws, he hadn’t hurt her.

The Keldari honestly and truly loved her.

So why, then, did Dharman’s stomach feel like he’d swallowed a belly full of cold, vicious rahkes?

A couple of hundred yesterday, a couple of hundred today.  I finally finished that scene I hinted about with the wounded Blood.  I’m not sure if it’ll stay or not, but I’m moving on.  During the drive home tonight, I tried to visualize how this next scene should play out, and I don’t have it yet.  If I can’t see it in my head, I can’t write it.  I may have to skip it for now.  The logistics are…challenging. 

Today and Yesterday:  1,248

NaNo Total:  78,603

Snippet:  Mykal pushes.  Shannari pushes back.  Scene starts in Shannari’s POV and then quickly shifts to Dharman’s.

As soon as her gaze touched him, Mykal surged forward.  He disregarded the blades at his throat and the rumbled warning from Dharman.  She scooped up the rahke and braced for full-scale war.

Crouched on all fours, Mykal lowered his head to the floor but kept his gaze locked on her.  He swirled his tongue against the white marble in long, open-mouthed licks and made a sound that sent shards of ice shrieking down her spine.  He licked every drop of her blood off the tile and it was not a man who stared at her, but the silver eyes of the Black Dragon.

#

Two rahkes in the bastard’s [word choice may not be correct for Sha’Kae al’Dan] neck hadn’t stop him.  Dharman glared at Lew and Jahne both, but what could they do?  It might take force enough to kill the savage to control him, and they cared not to wound na’lanna Qwen’s heart.

Mykal sat back on his heels and licked his chops.  “Two more wounds for you to taste, brightheart.”

Her eyes flared, her breathing deepening automatically, seeking his accursed scent that she found so compelling.  He’d deliberately waited until she was aroused to remind her of his presence.

Tense, Dharman waited for a signal from her on how she wanted to proceed.  Would she disregard his years of service and the Blood hierachy simply to take this man to her bed?  

Casually, she walked toward the kneeling savage, her hips swaying seductively, her eyes glowing with desire.  Sick at heart, Dharman barely breathed.  He would still serve as First Blood, at least.  She wouldn’t take that from him.  No one else stood between her and whatever dark deed the Endless Night had commissioned this man to commit. 

She smiled, and the hair on Dharman’s neck prickled.  He’d bet his rahke that the savage was sweating.  She touched the ivory rahke to Mykal’s cheek, trailed it down his neck, and without a single muscle in her face or body betraying her, she jammed it to the hilt in his shoulder.

A painful wound, but not life threatening. 

“Now you have a third.”  She jerked the blade out and lifted it to her mouth.  Mykal hadn’t made a sound when she’d stabbed him, but when she began to lick the blade, he groaned deep in his throat.  “When my Blood tell you to stay put, you had best do so.  They may spare your life out of consideration for me, but I assure you, I won’t hesitate to kill you if I must.”