Okay, am writing. Obviously. To deadline. This won’t mean anything to you, but I’m in the Witch Queen’s City section of SAINT DEATH’S HERALD.
It’s getting weird. We’ve had a lot of character-depth moments and stranger-in-a-strange-land moments, and now we have come to a sort of ALTERCATION moment.
I have been writing and re-writing this chapter for weeks. I finally have the first part right, structurally and tonally. But when it came to the altercation, I… hand-waved, a bit.
COMBAT IS NOT EASY. I don’t have a very good internal aerial view of objects in space, and it’s easier for me to think poetically and emotionally than ACTIVELY.
The last book? That battle? With Duantri and Cracchen? Do you know how many Ip Man and Jackie Chan clips on YouTube I had to watch to even get a sense of bodies in motion??? ARG!
But the time has come for Duantri to fight again. And so, I asked Carlos to help me simulate a combat. He helped make me a map. We used meeples, and dice, and some D&D figurines my brother Jeremy Cooney made us.
The final written combat won’t really be a round-by-round D&D regurgitation. When that works, that really works (as in the case of most Ilona Andrews books. I suspect they are master gamers and their fight scenes are CHEF KISS, but definitely seem to lean on things like stats, by-the-book spells, hit points, lair actions, that sort of thing), but the point is, I’m not that good.
But creating this fun combat simulation really did help me not DREAD writing this scene. I have notes! I have OPTIONS! It gave me a starting point.
And, most importantly, Carlos and I had so much fun setting it up. And it was surprising.
So now… I just have to re-draft the chapter. Again.
But it will be better than the chapter it was.
C.S.E. Cooney 
I always thought that the greatest fight in literature was the duel between Flay and Swelter in Titus Groan. The sense of bodies in motion was indeed a big part of what makes it so memorable: the spinning, the spider-like crawling, the flattening of a body against a wall. Anyway, I look forward to reading the Witch Queens section! Love these insights from your process.
I haven’t read Titus Groan yet!
…well, okay, that’s not quite true. I haven’t FINISHED reading it.
I remember someone telling me I must read the Gormenghast books, so I started the first one, and loved it on the wild, wonderful sentence level. I remember feeling its influences working in me, and that it gave me a sense of permission.
…But I think I must have picked it from a library or something, because I don’t remember finishing it, or having it around to encounter again. But just reading the names “Flay” and “Swelter” makes me want to give it another go.
Thank you so much for the rec, and for reading!