Shedding the Demon (37 page)

Renard snorted. “That sounds strange coming from you, Damon.
You actually want the Kyndraist church to rise again?”

“Not exactly, but the basic tenets are good. I thought you
could move them toward Christianity somehow. I don’t know. You should talk to
Leland.”

“I’ll have to think about it.” Renard paused. Then he made a
point of looking Damon in the eye. “Have you gone to see them yet? Leland’s
congregation?”

They stopped walking as they reached a large, arched doorway
leading out to one of the docks on the caldera lake.

“Um,” Damon said, “I’ve got a ship to catch. I’m off to
fight some more pirates!” He gestured over his shoulder toward the lake.

“Damon. You can’t avoid them forever. You owe them a visit.”

Damon looked down. “I just—I don’t know, I still feel
responsible for the death of their loved ones.”

“You and me both. I’m just as responsible as you are. I met
with them, and they forgave me. Their compassion is moving, and they’ve made me
re-think my own beliefs.”

Damon met his gaze. “I’ll go sometime soon—”

“Do it before you head back to the fleet. I’ve arranged a
shuttle for you, please take it.”

Damon sighed heavily. “All right, I’ll do it. Thank you.”

Renard shook his hand heartily with both hands. “Take care
of yourself, Damon. And I’ll see you again soon. We can try to find more
information on your home.”

Damon was suddenly still, lost in thought for moment before
stammering, “I was thinking about that, too. We could search for
The Beacon
,
it’s a well-known legend throughout The Ruins—my ruins—and we might find
something on it.”

“That really might help, I’ll ask Jeffrey . . . oh,
I guess, well, I guess I’ll look for it myself!”

 “Thanks,” Damon said. “Maybe together we can find it.”

 

 

 

More than two years ago, through a
long series of events while searching for tanking info for a popular MMO
(thanks
Honorshammer
!), I
eventually found myself on the
Saucy Ink
website. There I learned about
NaNoWriMo
,
and the writing bug was kindled. Luckily, I also found Taven Moore’s excellent
NaNo
prep course
, and I followed every step of her plan or I would not be
writing this today.

 

I was surprised to discover that
writing takes planning! Now, in real life, I’m a project manager, so I’m all
about planning! This I could understand. Taking what little creative juice I
had, I planned the heck out of this novel. I planned for
two whole months
leading up to NaNo, and I needed every bit of it.

 

NaNo was fun, crazy, and actually
quite productive. I won, which simply means I wrote 50,000 words in the month,
but more importantly, I discovered that writing is hard work, and planning is
the key to success. A good idea is nice, but it won’t get you past anything
longer than a short story.

 

With NaNo complete, my enthusiasm waned. At
one point I decided I didn’t need to finish. Why should I? I’m not writing a
best-seller here, I’m not going to make a living as a writer, so who cares if I
quit? I’m only doing for fun, right? Then my 11-year-old son asked me when the
book would be done. Apparently he’d told his teacher that I was writing a book,
and the teacher wanted to know when he could read it. If I quit now, it
wouldn’t set a very good example would it?

 

So I buckled down. It should have
been easy, but it wasn’t. I still struggled with getting words down, and now
I’d hit the empty places in my initial outline from soooo long ago. Despite
that fact, I had created the ending in the planning stage, and I knew (sort of)
how to get there; there was simply the DOING.

 

Finally, during my lunch break, I
typed in “THE END” at around 107,000 words.

 

If you’d like to read the whole novel
creation story, there are three guest posts I wrote for TavenMoore.com:

 

 

 

 

This book was written using
Scrivener for Windows:

 

And revised using the
Novel
Revision Database
from KnuckleHead Computers.

 

And finally, my Amazon author’s
page:
http://www.amazon.com/Bill-Denise/e/B007PKG2OG/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_6