NaNo Day 38

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?