In the Kastle

Folks, folks I did it! I did it! I finished NaNo twelve days ahead of schedule!

It's a glorious feeling, truly, to be done this early, something I've wanted to do, but haven't managed before. But last night, I reached 80,000 on Water Princess, Fire Prince! I had to write 7,342 words yesterday to do so, totally creaming my previous record of 4,819 (which was set last Wednesday. I've been breaking record all month!), but those words were no match for me.

I'm nowhere close to being done, but I did finish part 3 and plow into part 4, as evidenced by the fact that the wordcount bar on the sidebar is now gold for The Kastle. I'm not exactly sure why I chose gold, but it seemed like a good color. You may noticed that the expected wordcount has gone up from 100,000 to 120,000. I knew I was going to do this at one some point, but I wanted my word count to be higher so that the percentages looked better.

Anyways, since this is cause for celebration, snippets!

Slowly he bent down and pulled his sword out of the dirt where she had left it and sheathed it. He met the eye of the young man who had met them when they entered the camp. Jakob, she had called him, the son of Lord Erik, according to Abraham. He gave Andrew a sympathetic smile.

    “She’s testy around strangers,” Jakob explained. “You intimidate her.”

    “I, uh, sorry?” Andrew swallowed. “She…”

    “Oh, don’t worry about it,” said Jakob. “It’s about the only language she understands. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her speechless before.”

“Oh, I get it,” Karlos nodded. “Well, you have some pretty cool animals.” He picked up the giraffe figurine. “This one has a pretty long neck. Why?”

“So it can reach the leaves of pretty tall trees,” Andrew explained. “In real life, they’re about seventeen feet tall, and their tongues are about seven inches long, and blue.”

Karlos’ eyes widened. “Really?”

“Really. I took my brothers to feed one at the zoo once. I think you’d like them, they’re pretty cool.”

“So why did you seem so upset when I showed them to you?” Karlos asked. “They seem pretty cool to me.”

“They are pretty cool,” Andrew agreed, placing an ostrich, the last member of the collection onto the log. “But the problem was, they weren’t supposed to be in my backpack.”

Honestly, that guy was the absolute last she would have picked had it been up to her. His sword skills were subpar, and he was a redhead. She hated redheads. Before she had met him, she’d had nothing against the hair color, it was true, but now … well, she had what she considered a good reason. If she was honest with herself, she still had nothing against the hair color, but between Kath’s constant teasing back home, and the fact that he was one – but, to be fair, what else would you expect out of a Fire Prince? she had blue eyes, after all, as would be expected of a Water Princess – she was willing to declare war on the whole redheaded race.

    It was truly a pity that Amber was said to have brown hair, because her ire had to go somewhere.

“What’s with all the papers?” asked Jasmine, sitting down on the other side of the box, and pointing to all the fake money.

“Well, in my world, we have this funny idea that paper is worth something,” Clara explained. “We put special patterns on it, call it money, and use it to buy things. This isn’t real money, but we use it to buy things in this game.”

“What’s that?” she asked, pointing to the mug.

   He glanced down and blinked slowly, as he swirled the brown liquid around inside. “Hot chocolate,” he said, at length.

   “Hot Chocolate?” she repeated.

   He nodded. “Want some?”

   “If you’re offering, sure. I haven’t had anything except Hot Pommel Cider since I got to Klarand,” said Clara. “The stuff may be good, but there are days when only chocolate will do.”

“People aren’t the only ones to fall through doors, not always.”

Andrew spun around, waving his flashlight around violently until it fell on a girl seated on the top of an overturned helmet – there was a good deal of armor in the room as well – dressed in a tank top and jeans, her hair pulled back in a ponytail. Her hand went up to shield her eyes.

“Didn’t your parents teach you not to shine those things in people’s eyes?” she protested.

Andrew lowered the flashlight, frowning. “Who are you and what are you doing here?” he asked.

“The name’s Laura, though most people call me the Doorkeeper,” she answered. “As for what I’m doing here – well, it’s a room full of things from all sorts of worlds. I sorta belong here.”

The silence was awkward between them, and she was getting tired of it. Casting a glance towards the strange combination of water and fire that flowed beside them, she exclaimed, “Movie magic, I love it.”

   He turned towards her with a confused expression on his face. “Movie magic?”

   She pointed towards the chasm. “Don’t you just love movie magic?”

   He got the joke this time and chuckled. “Water Princess, this isn’t a movie,” he pointed out.

   “Oh,” she let the silence sit for several seconds before she added. “I just keep getting mixed up.” She sighed. “But now that you mention it, you’re right, I just don’t think this is a movie. Probably just a book.”

   “A book?”

   “And, knowing our luck, not even one of the good ones. Probably some self-published work.” She shook her head. “I’d hate to know what the cover art looks like. Probably some photoshop fail.”

   He laughed. “That would be just our luck.”

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And before I go, I'd like add one more thing. Since I've finished NaNo, I'm going to give opportunity for one (1) person to read what I've got written so far (because I'm brave like that and let people read my unedited stuff sometimes). To enter, all you have to do is comment on this post and let me know that you'd like to read the story. I'll announce the winner next week, and then send them the 80,000 words (or 90,000, as the case might be, depending on how eloquent I wax. I've reached the point in the story where I flew through an entire notebook in a matter of weeks last time.) My goal is to finish the book completely before Christmas, so we'll see what we can do.

Also, don't forget that anyone who has left a review of Sew and Take is eligible to beta read Kingdom. (Although I'm willing to be lenient if you've only reviewed Take, because I'm nice like that). If you have reviews up, go ahead and send me links so that I can add you to my list. I'll be announcing information about the cover reveal shortly, which should be taking place on the 31st of December, should my cousin get the cover art done. I've been working on what I'm going to do for the release party as well, and I'll give you a hint - It'll be very Arthurian based. You guys will love it.

On another note, the prophecy from WPFP actually inspired a girl on pinterest to write a book of her own, except that they're both princesses. Her pinterest board is pretty neat, and I stole some of the pins (though mostly for Fire and Song, because I'm like that.)