At the Climax Portion of the Book

pinical in Garden of the Gods, Colorado

I've worked up to this point in the book--the climax! The pinical! Finally, I'm there. But then as I wrote out the scene, something wasn't working. I had to let it rest. And I sort of mulled around through the weekend, waiting for the answer to come. Why wasn't this exciting me suddenly?

Then, I was reading one of my favorite authors, Kim Harrison, her Black Magic Sanction (and it's as good as I'd expect from her). I had inspriation from something inside the pages (for an earlier scene that takes place), but something about the way in which she creates problems for her Rachel character, made me realize I had not done this in this scene. I needed there to be a real challenge for my characters to find the little girl before the man does. (If I say more, I'll spoil this). They are in Cave of the Winds in Manitou Springs, Co. I have three buses drop off children at the cave. The man is after the little girl, and Sabrina knows what the little girl looks like and why the man wants to find her.

But I have another problem lurking for her: The Albino, who is a true Undead, and he desires to take souls to feed on and that's one of the reasons he is there, but he would like nothing better than to feast on Sabrina's soul because she is a sibyl. (Yummy!)

What I had failed to do was make her search a little more complicated, put up obstacles, problems. I had Sabrina, Chris, and Bill get there just as the children get there. WRONG! I had to have them be delayed by traffic, plus a long drive down a mountain road. Also, I needed to have them realize the man who holds danger for the little girl in Sabrina's vision is already there. He drives a very destictive car--a '59 Caddilac with the big fins, and I thought I'd better have them find it there in the parking lot. At first I didn't.

So, I fixed all this. They find the man's car first. They get inside and there are more than one tour and so Sabrina makes up a little white lie about being late for the school tour, and once they get inside the cave, they are not with the group which has the little girl.

And while they discuss things off to the side, Dante showes up (because he is an Undead too, but is very VERY devoted to Sabrina), tells her that The Albino is there with them. She now has Bill, who is a Nephilm, a werewolf (Chris), and now Dante (Undead). I'm setting the thing up. I'm moving slowly, as though I'm walking through this cave too.

This is where I am:

"The Albino is very near," Dante said. "He is here, in fact. Waiting."

I looked from him to Bill and then to Chris.

Bill stepped in front of me. "Then we must all guard her." The two other men fell in beside me and behind me and we all moved along the cave's uneven floor.

"This is crazy," I complained mildly. "The only one of you who would have any chance against another astral vampire is Dante."

"It is true," Bill said. "But there is one soul that the Albino would crave more than yours."

"Whose?" I asked, incredulous.

"Mine."

The Wisdom of Waiting for The Answer to a Problem

The problem was--well I have this character in the third book. He is actually one of the main characters who dies at the end of the second book (nope, not gonna tell who), and somehow comes back into existence. I had to find a good explanation of what happened to him, how he would be able to come back.

I knew what he was going to do in the third book, and how I was going to play this out at the end. But the problem was to explaining what he becomes, more or less--that was my problem.

I woke early today, just before I needed to get up at 4 am, and I went searching for something, an article for some other thing I wanted to do, totally not related to my problem.

You ever do that? You loose an object, can't find it, you look all over, tear the place up looking for it, but can't find it, and weeks or months later, you're looking for some other thing else and BINGO! There that other thing is!

Well this was sort of like that. I wasn't looking for this particular thing, but I picked up pages I'd printed out - because it was so interesting - from some site I belong to, and it had a couple of magical/vampire terms and explanations of these terms, and I read one and went AH! That's IT!!!!

I found this explanation for an astral vampire. Astral vampires move through the astral plane and/or subtle reality and feeds off the energy of others. They can be nonphysical entities, or may be living, physical beings who have the ability to move and interact on a nonphysical levels of existence. According to Dion Fortune, "an astral vampire is created when a particularly powerful magical worker resists the second death and perpetuates this unnatural existence by preying upon the energies of others."

Perfect!!!

Sometimes being anal about saving stupid things, like articles from papers, and the various things I find interesting that I might have printed out, sometimes saves my butt. In this case it merely saved me from fretting over how to explain what this character eventually becomes, and also why he can't really be around a lot. Dead, or even un-dead.

So, now I've patched this into place. Things are finally coming together. Plus, I have the last week of this month off, and I'll use it to my advantage. I hope in several ways. More on that later!