Every step of the way, each new card spread is pointing directions for the story and revealing the plot. Little by little I get more ideas for who these characters are and what they've done before, are doing now, and will be doing as the plot progresses.

As usual, though, sometimes it's tricky to tell exactly what character is supposed to appear in a scene.

At first glance, this chapter's spread appears to be one of those times.

1. Seven of Swords (inverted)
2. The Hanged Man
3. Strength
4. The Sun (Inverted)
5. Wheel of Fortune (inverted)
6. Knight of Swords
7. King of Shields (inverted)
8. The Universe
9. King of Swords
10. Six of Shields (inverted)

No matter what, there's some interesting progressions--especially since I'm using the Celtic Cross and Staff spread (which, as time goes on, I'm thinking may not be the best spread to use for this sort of exercise... at least not in the general chapter plotting area).Read more

OK, finally got to just over my minimum for Chapter 4. That only leaves me about, oh, 10,000 words behind (give or take a thousand). Still better than previous years, though. I'm up to just over 7,000--which puts me not too far away from the most I think I ever managed to crank out during a NaNoWriMo.

So, not bad at all, actually, when put in context. :)

Counting these blog entries, I'm over 10K words.

Anyway...

In this past word dump, I seem to have introduced one of my "go to" background groups: a still kind of mysterious terrorist organization. They first appeared in my writing years ago in a story set in the far-flung future where they were greatly opposed to humans leaving the planet (or something along those lines... never did finish that story).

Based on some other bits that have come to light as the words pour from my fingers, it seems they may know about some things that most people in the world do not... and things that our main characters are going to be discovering (or, in at least two cases, re-discovering).

Only two chapters left in this section of the book. Which should work out pretty well as I've got one more main character to introduce and then I have to bring them all together so the real story can get started.Read more

OK, not even 800 words for the weekend. This is bad. But I acomplished some other things, so that is good.

I did let myself be distracted by an interesting idea. See, this year I'm writing this more or less post by post in a quick Drupal site I set up. (I set up Drupal sites all the damn time for work, so it's no problem to throw together something quick for personal use.) At least, the original idea was for it to be a quick and simple site. Just a blog and the story.

That idea lasted until I got sick of flipping back through the blog or story posts to find character, business and other names and facts. So I've come up with a set of content types that will interrelate and keep track of a number of things.

First and foremost, I'm going to have a full listing of every character that gets introduced and reference the story posts they appear in. Same for businesses or organizations.

Then there will be a running list of annotated reference links that will generate both from blog posts and in-story citations (a real benefit of writing in a "live" environment is the ability to link what may be esoteric information--like acronyms or historical references--to deeper information on other parts of the Web, giving the reader a chance to gain a deeper understanding of the writing).Read more

Static jumped across the heads-up display as explosion hit. Captain Solomon Mercado gritted his teeth, tightened his grip, and fought the force of the blast. He could hear the power plant kick in to overdrive and feel the shudder of the stabilizers. Something popped, without checking the now glitchy HUD, he was pretty sure it was one of the gyros. Maintaining balance from here on out would be difficult.

He twisted the control stick and refocused himself. There was a slight coppery taste and electric charge rolling across his tongue. He knew the human-machine interface was on the verge of overloading but there was no way he could release the manual controls long enough to readjust anything. Pain had always been part of the job, he just hoped it wouldn't spark this time.

In front of him the smoke began to clear as a rain of blasted rock and dirt skittered across the viewport. A quick visual assessment showed him that he arms of the thirty foot tall war machine he was riding were still intact. The fact that he was still upright spoke well of the status of the legs. Swiveling the body, he turned to face the automated turret that had unleashed the volley of missiles at him. A quick squeeze of the trigger--even with the HUD barely functional--turned it into a smoldering heap of slag as a few hundred incendiary rounds flew from the vehicle's shoulder cannon.Read more

Yeah, didn't get anything new cranked out today. Was more than a little preoccupied with other things... like queezing enough space into the budget for a spiffy new Droid phone. That should show up on Monday. I'll be able to write during my commute again! And read.

This is good.

The next spread for the coming chapter has been drawn. Behold!

1. King of Shields
2. Ace of Swords
3. Two of Cups
4. The Sun
5. Five of Shields
6. Four of Swords
7. Six of Cups
8. Death
9. Six of Spears (inverted)
10. Eight of Swords

Again, I'm not sure right off the top what characters are involved in this chapter, but I'm suspecting (once I further inspect the cards) that we may finally see Solomon Mercado (our Knight of Shields) or Kristy Roth (our Queen of Swords) make an appearance... there certainly is the space for them here.

That was kind of unexpected.

Looks like we have another two characters that just showed up, neither of which I was expecting.

Oliver Coffee is a former employee of Diversified Research Engineering, the company that just merged with British Implimentations.

Adolfo Demetrius is a gregarious stranger that came knocking on his door with a strange story and promise of destiny.

We also now  know there's some sort of movement afoot based around a sacred text of some sort. Could this be what the Seven of Cups keeps hinting at in the story spreads? It just may be.

I've also decided that I really need to make some changes to a section of Chapter 2... the whole justification for why BI starts a new division is a bit too doom and gloomy to be sellable, even in the reality of this story. They're more likely attempting to record and preserve endagered cultures than to be trying to save the world by total information management or something... going to have to figure out how best to do that.

Anyway, that's another 1900 words or so. Not quite caught up, but closer.

Can't wait to see what happens next.

Also, note the change in the URL of the site: it's now fiction.durosia.com. I figured that opens up a few more possibilities than just NaNoWriMo.

Oliver Coffee had never been an important man.

At Diversified Research Engineering, he had been in middle management, mostly shuffling paperwork between analysts, scientists, and the C-level suits. That's what he had been.

Yesterday he was let go.

Now, alone in his little city apartment, he lay in bed, awake, staring at the alarm that wouldn't be going off. Telling himself that he was OK with a little vacation. Knowing that he wasn't. He still stunk of last night's drinking, other evidence of it littered the floor.

He watched the minutes change on the clock. Eight thirty. Nine o'clock. Ten. Hunger and the need to piss eventually roused him. He shuffled through the stale air of his small studio apartment, absently kicking at an empty bottle of Jack. It rolled over the stained copy of his release letter, coming to rest on the edge of the packet that explained the benefits he was due.

Oliver hadn't read that. He hadn't been able to make it past the first page before apathy kicked in. All he cared about was that the last paycheck would be deposited with a hefty additional amount. An amount that might get him enough out of debt that hunting for a new job wouldn't be a problem. Maybe.Read more

It's amazing the difference a day makes.

Went out after work with some coworkers, had a great time. Got home a little before midnight and sat down to spread the cards and write a bit... and promptly crashed out on the couch.

I may be able to crank out 3K words on Wednesday, but I'm thinking the catchup may have to wait for the weekend.

Either way, here's the spread for the next chapter:

1. Two of Shields (inverted)
2. The Tower
3. Ace of Swords (inverted)
4. King of Swords
5. Eight of Cups
6. The Horned One (inverted)
7. The Moon (inverted)
8. Seven of Cups
9. Knight of Spears (inverted)
10. The Hierophant (inverted)

Well... it looks like someone is having a particularly rough time in this chapter. Figuring out who is one of the real challenges of doing "readings" this way.

In a typical reading, it's very clear who the subject of the reading is. Using the spread the way I am for this work of fiction, I have to kind of work backwards to figure out which character the cards are talking about. At least at this early point, where I'm still introducing the characters.

Definitely a challenge.

But fun. And a good mental and creative workout.

Now if I just didn't have to sleep or go to work, I could really make this happen tonight. ;)

Well, there's another 1700+ words down.

Next trick is to get around to doing that before it gets near 3 a.m. (Of course, it doesn't help that I totally crashed out when I sat down to start writing at 10 p.m., after being barely awake enough to make dinner when I got home... )

This time around, we've got one new character (who was mentioned in passing in the original setup), a new company mentioned and the "I'm not quite sure what I'm going to do with it" insertion of an MMORPG... it just seemed like the kind of thing Trent would be working on.

Noreen (who's name was generated in the standard method) fits a bit with both the queen's that showed up in the spread for this chapter. We'll be getting to know her better as time goes on, I think. The company she works for, Firedrake Consulting, was inspired by the last card in the layout.

Everything else... well... we'll see how that all plays out.

I was "accused" of being organized in all this by a friend. The truth is, I'm totally flying by the seat of my pants. Aside from the simple arithmetic used to divide everything up into 30 parts (one per day) and those parts into sensible chunks, I'm just going by what the cards lay out.Read more

Trent blindly slapped at the blaring alarm clock. Every swipe knocked something else off of his bedside table and echoed oh so loudly inside his throbbing skull.

Eyes still tightly closed, he finally laid his hand on the body of the clock and found the snooze button. Blissful silence! He groaned and laid back in bed, rubbing his sure-to-be bloodshot eyes while cursing himself for not remembering to turn the damn thing off the night before.

Oh, god, the night before! Now that had been something else. With the news of the merger, he had been concerned about the job he had been offered at BI. It was his dream job and the preliminary interiews had gone well, but the final two were a little less than stellar. He'd been late to the last one, oversleeping after spending all night logged on to the game server he was helping run. The competition was tough, he knew at least four other people--all programmers at least as good as him--who were vying for the same position with BI. When he didn't hear anything for two weeks after that, he'd just about given up hope.

And then he read about the pending merger. Trent knew there'd be a glut of people for every position that had been open at BI and that everyone from DRE would probably be given preference for most of those. He knew he didn't really stand a chance. So he threw himself into to the game.Read more