(no subject)

323 new words on The Hellion Prince, and well over three thousand edited... well, edited for content and continuity.  I think they still need to be trimmed for length.  Though two people in a carriage have little to do but talk to one another, the dialogue is excessive.

And much as I love Damarhis and Chrysinthe exchanging witty banter, well, every author needs to be able to kill their darlings.  Or at least maim them.

ETA:  Just bit my lip and cut a straight run of 1800 words from the first draft.  I'll save them, of course, because there are valuable bits that can be worked back into later scenes, but without them the chapter is a reasonable length, and probably only a day or two from being ready to post.

Harass me about that, okay guys?

Excerpt:

"The Prince will get a Faerie, if that's what he wants. But a civilised one, I should think. If my mother came to him he might die of fright ..." The two of them sat a moment in silence and imagined that image – for Damarhis, at least, a not-altogether unpleasant one. He wondered, for a moment, what it must be like to have a mother like that – a seemingly infallible, all-powerful, goddess-like figure, a force of nature as much as a person, and doubly so to a child. He wondered how it had shaped Chrysinthe, to grow up that way... and if, when he asked her to be herself, he really had the slightest idea what that might mean.