Word count: 2,010

Reward for achieving daily goal: A walk along the river Avon, filling up my Pokemon backpack.

Verdict:

Less shaky than yesterday – didn’t even try to write Tail of Two Scions. Just got straight into the fun one. Not really much more to report. Kataryna got attacked by giant cockroaches, poor Fluffy was almost killed, and she was rescued by Daniel – and his golden furred “friend”,  Jamilyn. I am unsure how the Jamilyn/Kataryna story is going to play out. The whole “he already has a girlfriend and I’m jealous of her and she’s a bitch to me” plot is pretty much utterly overdone, and hey, Jamilyn IS a bitch – cos she’s a female wolf. But she’s quite nice. Blue-eyed (maybe she has some husky blood?). Kataryna is way geekier than I initially intended and I love it! She’s hamming up the whole “I’m an entomologist” thing and being a little nerdy show-off. Gonna roll with this. It’s also fun, and a little weird, to try and put in a few little things that make it easily and immediately apparent that she is romantically (or perhaps just sexually) attracted to Daniel. I’m so used to starting with the “we don’t get along or we’re just friends” thing that actually having a character go “Wow, he’s damned sexy and I’d have his children if that were actually genetically viable”* makes for a refreshing change.

Scrivener: have now activated auto-correct on words to avoid the capitalisation issue. Unfortunately, due to misspellings it also sometimes corrects names and also replaces with the wrong word. Think I am now aware why someone in a book I read – not mine! – was “gestating wildly”. Had some fun with the name generator.

Extract:

(Context: Kataryna has just been rescued from two cockroaches, each the size of a large dog.)

“Are ye alright?” A low voice, deep and masculine, almost a growl.
Her eyes rose, to see him, tall and broad shouldered. Long dark hair fell to his shoulders in gentle waves, except for two braids that framed his face. He had the long, broad muzzle of a predator, but his forehead creased in a furrow of concern, mirrored in his amber eyes. His pelt was a thick, rich, almost chocolate, brown, darker about his muzzle and chin. His triangular ears stood alert, twitching slightly, alert to other dangers.
“Can ye stand?” He reached towards her, offered her his hand. The other held a slender sword, insect ichor glistened upon it, in the ever-deepening twilight.
“I’m fine,” Kataryna replied, a little annoyed at the quiver in her voice. Sure, he was rather pleasing to look at — she’d always had a thing for lupines, despite her mother’s distinct disapproval — and his voice was such a rich, deep burr… that accent made the fur on her nape tingle with something that was definitely not fear. It also didn’t hurt that he looked very fetching in his kilt, which showed rather a nice glimpse of his muscular chest and plush black chest-fur. “Thank you,” she added, slipping Fluffy into her coat pocket and accepting his offer of assistance. His fingers were warm and strong as that wrapped about her’s.
“Think nothing of it,” he replied, heaving her to her feet. “Now, tell me lass, whatever were you doing out here, all on your lonesome?”
“Not alone,” she replied. “Not really.” She suddenly become very aware, not only of the male’s nearness and his deep, masculine musk, but also that she was still holding his hand. He seemed to realise at the same time, and they both unleashed their shared grasp and took a step back. “Um, there was another one. Another roach.” She tore her gaze away from his honey-gold eyes and glanced around.

Random odd things I had to stop writing and Google today:

• The difference between a beetle and a bug – this almost ruined my joke, because I thought a roach was a beetle. Turns out it isn’t a beetle or a bug. Luckily, it’s not a bug, because if it was a bug I would’ve had to delete a few precious sentences!
• Parts of an umbrella. The canvas-y bit is indeed called a “canopy”.

Also, if you want to read my Work-in-Progress, it’s now linked from the search bar above: Love in Tirra-Inle

[* lemurs and wolves cannot hybridise in my Furritasia world. Or the real world, of course!]