Fiddle: Opening Act

Today, it’s a writing morning. I’m working on “Fiddle”–the second draft.

“Fiddle” takes place approximately 75 years after the events of Desdemona and the Deep, and though I wouldn’t call it a sequel, there are a few recurring characters. Because the gentry and the koboldkin are rather long-lived.

The first draft is currently over 40,000 words, so I’m betting by the time I’m finished drafting it, it’ll either be just under that, or, more likely, closer to 60,000, which means… ANOTHER ACCIDENTAL NOVEL! We’ll see if I can finish Draft 2 by the end of April.

That’s the plan. But, like all my plans lately, it’ll probably take a wee bit longer. (Sorry, Mike Allen. Re: The Twice-Drowned Saint!)

Only this time, I’m going into revisions, PREPARED. It’s a very loose, breezy first person; the POV character is a goblin girl named Loxósseliss, or Lox for short, sometimes called “Fiddle” by her friends–and not because she can play an instrument.

Here’s the opening section, for the interested:

PART I

DIDA + ISTAT = L0V3

Three weddings, three worlds, one city, one day. And I was involved in all of them—more or less.

For a shy girl who doesn’t get out much, this should’ve been a form of torture—but thankfully, I’d lately fallen into totally unrequited love with a gangly, bemused, prophetic school teacher, and I had it on good authority he’d be attending at least two of the same weddings. Hence, what would otherwise have been an arduous social outing became an arduous social outing with devastating consequences for failing to appear.

Okay, well, I had to go to the first one. My sister appointed me her witness, and you do not let down a goblin girl on her day of days, get me? Not if her name’s Dida, and she brought food to your door when you were in grad school and suddenly found you couldn’t bear to leave your apartment, not even in the dead of night, and anyway you adore her and would have gone for her sake even if she hadn’t invited Schoolmaster Hottiepants to her wedding just as a favor to you.

And the second wedding? The whole world was invited to that one. All three worlds, in fact. Or, at least, representatives therefrom. Me, I was just the unlucky draw that time. Either that, or mama rigged the family lotto for her own reasons, which, yeah, I wouldn’t put past her, and no, I wasn’t going to confront her about it. Goblin mama says go to the Gentry Tripartite’s 75th Renewal of Vows, you do what goblin mama says.

The third wedding was a surprise, the morning of. We’ll get to that one. Suffice to say that I couldn’t have refused the invitation if I tried.

And, damn it. I tried.