It’s been a good two days for moving the contents of the novel forward, although my word count has only been decent.  I’m 150 words behind right now, and it’s just not happening anymore tonight…but I’m hoping to get some good writing time in during the long weekend (at least, the later part), so I should be able to catch up!

Yesterday Lyra and Dastan got their first romantic scene, some 34,000 words in.  For me, that’s early.  I have a tendency to have my leads dance around each other (no pun intended!) for entire novels and finally get together at the end.  A close friend who is usually one of the first to read my novels still hasn’t forgiven me for the couple who didn’t get together until the second-to-last chapter.  Definite romance only halfway through will probably make her happy.  It might make up for the other draft I’m working on, which again holds the romance off until the very end…

So yesterday moved matters forward nicely, despite a last-minute change of setting.  And it turned out Dastan was right, you can’t actually see much from the top of a tower when the surrounding landscape is dark, so an orchard was better…but he could’ve pointed it out to me earlier, you know?

(I think this is a product of the frenetic writing of NaNo–both that the characters seem to be taking control more often than usual, and that I’m looking at it that way.)

Today, I was trying to sort out the next section of plot, and suddenly realized a terrible, dramatic, vitally important matter I have been completely overlooking for the last several months as this story formed in my head–I hadn’t figured out how to bring Jones in!  Regular blog readers know that Jones is my regular character–my clumsy, well-meaning, hopefully endearing man who gets at least a cameo in all of my novels.  He’s my game for regular readers, something to spot in each novel.

Jones already has a life in this universe–he works at an inn that figures prominently in The People the Fairies Forget–so I decided for this story he gets to take a break from helping customers at the inn and have a go at being a champion, trying to rescue the princesses from their supposed curse.  He is remarkably and amazingly ill-suited to being a champion of any sort, which should provide some fun scenes.

How’s about his opening scene as tonight’s excerpt?  A little clarifier–his full name is Richard Samuel Jones, and while he normally goes by Sam, here he’s trying to put on the right image by presenting himself as Sir Richard.  The “Sir” is completely invented, as will be revealed later but I might as well just tell you now!

Our fifty-third champion turned out to be one of my favorites.  Possibly my absolute favorite, depending on how I choose to qualify the last one.  #53 was responsible for one of the very few times I ever laughed during supper with my father.

I saw him for the first time when we came into supper, and he was already sitting at the table by Father.  I classified him as one of the Well-Meaners.  They’re the ones who smile at us when we come in.  The Greed-ers don’t pay much attention to us, and the Cattle-Buyers leer.

#53 smiled, and when everyone did their polite rising to their feet, he tried to too.  Instead, there was a completely spectacular tripping.  I have no idea how a person trips over a chair he’s trying to stand up from, but he managed it.  Then he picked himself up without a trace of embarrassment or any indication that he felt this was out of the ordinary, which was somehow even funnier.

My sisters and I got to our seats with tightly clamped lips and a lot of pink cheeks.  Father, whose mouth may have twitched a little but who mostly maintained his solemnity, introduced #53 as Sir Richard of Ryvideau, and then went through his usual speech about the slippers and proof and so on.

Richard got back into his seat without incident, and food was served.  There were five courses.  He managed to knock over his drink twice (which let me see he was drinking water, so it wasn’t that kind of clumsiness), dropped a chicken leg, and lost three napkins.  He stayed amiable and unperturbed through it all, which made me wonder, first, if this was just normal for him, and second, if so, how he could possibly have ever become a knight.