Farstrider, no more

I did a little Google search a few minutes ago.  

Turns out Farstriders are elves in World of Warcraft.  

Here I thought I had come up with the name.  Oh, well...Looks like I'll need to keep looking for a name for my newly minted race.

Which Witch is Which?

Had a busy day today with various commitments with the local heritage committee and a luncheon at the Rotary Club, but I did find time to revisit a story started a while ago that needed some distance.  

The Witch was supposed to be a quaint little story about a depressed outsider in a small town.  It grew and grew into a coming of age story about a group of friends and a special friendship between an 8 year old girl and the town's most shunned resident.

I shelved The Witch some time ago when I decided to start writing some scary stories.  I have been thinking about the story lately and read over the first little bit today.  I like it.  I like it a lot.

The subject matter is difficult but exciting.  It's one of those stories with autobiographical content swimming in fabricated lies.  I'm not quite ready to return to The Witch, not just yet.  I have Farstrider to update and finish and am working on something with Old Timer.  I am also, each Friday while watching the kids at swimming lessons, working on Middleman Aquisitions and, I must say, am having a lot of fun with it.

In further news I seem to be having a little run of bad luck - nothing major, just a bunch of little things, since my little collision a few weeks ago. 

Appears that God had a favourite deer...and I killed him. 

Farstrider

Well, it has been a while since I last wrote about my family's Close Encounter of the Thump Kind with a majestic white-tailed deer.   We have now heard from the insurance company and it did indeed cost us deerly.  The car's damage was more extensive than first thought - there was a lot of stuff smushed-in under that crumpled hood and the cost of repairs quickly escalated.  Too bad - I'll miss the Camry.

So, as the Beynon's adjust to life as a one car family (something that was going to happen soon, anyway), I have revisited my Loremaster manuscript with a new and critical eye.  As I read it,  I now see things I was too close to before.  Lots of little things that can be cut or tweeked.  The entire prologue is gone - I liked the prologue with its Mission Impossible raid, but I'm learning that prologues can be a kiss of death for a manuscript and really, Loremaster worked perfectly well without it.  Reading the manuscript, I could see that it was too Elf-y and Dwarf-y and Wizard-y and a little Monk-y.  These can be fixed.  The monks can become Zealots but still keep their nobility and religion.  The Wizards will become Scholars and Craftsmen and still weild thier magical might.  The Dwarves...well, them I can just do without - Gruff, ill-mannered humans can accomplish anything the Dwarves could have done but the Elves were going to be a problem.  One of the main characters happened to be an Elf...but no longer.  Now he's a Farstrider.

"What's a Farstrider?" you may ask.  Ask away, but I'm not telling - you'll just have to wait and see.  

But I will give you this much:

"Farstrider" will be the new title of the book.