I’ve just released chapter 10 of Wallachia, “Red Tower Pass.” Horses and vampires and wolves, oh my! (Get it on the App Store!)
As I say in the news section, this one was very hard for me to get down. I knew what was going to happen in the story, but I just couldn’t make the words come out right. One morning I woke up with a new opening line in my head, and it started to slowly to come together from there. Not that there’s anything special about the opening line — it’s no “Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again” — just that once I figured out I needed to flash back a little bit between the present moment and Marley’s first ride to Turnu Roșu Pass, the story started to work.
The other problem was that I hadn’t intended to reveal where Marley had been for those two years just yet, but I couldn’t figure out how to write around it. Having a whole chapter where two characters avoid talking about something just to keep the reader in the dark didn’t work. Once I let go of that and let the story take me where it wanted to go, I wound up with something I was happy with.