On the Quivering Edge

I cannot wait! I’m champing at the bit to move forward and start work on my novella for NaNoWriMo!

I’ve never done it before, so I am enthused by the challenge to write 50k words again (though my first two novel drafts (From Ash Wednesday to Memorial Day) it was almost 200k words. So I think I can do it. My hardest task I think will be shutting up and keeping it a Novella.

Last week I did the loose plot and picked the names. I checked with my Guru for all things Norse for some nice new terms to use and verify some usage of concepts, and I think this will be pretty cool.

Now… what worries me.

“The Price of Mendacity” (Working Title) is going to be nearly a Shakespearian trage-comedy, not the “Epic Christian Fantasy Adventure” the rest of Reimarsoga is going to be. Sort of the same way “Ran” is a sublime but total rip off of “King Lear”. So if someone reads this as an introduction to my work, it will be to my setting and my style, but not to the series. I hope that doesn’t ruin any reader’s expectation. I dunno. I’m overthinking. Someone tell me to shut up here.

As a side note, I started listening to the Librevox version of Jack London’s “The Sea Wolf”. Man! I forgot how great a book that really was! I am just enthralled with London’s writing style. It’s of a similar subject matter of Melville but instead of wrist-slittingly difficult to comprehend, it’s far more accessible to my eye. Oh well,

I really hope that writing this will also distract me from waiting to edit from my beta readers. I am going bonkers waiting, with my inner Veruca Salt screaming “Make time go faster!”. I have gotten one preliminary response back from one reader, whom I will share his answer to one of the questions on the Beta Questionnaire: