![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/02\/kitchen-chairs.jpg\" "\\"kitchen-chairs\\"")
<\/a>New chairs with new tablecloth & trial chair pad<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n
And in the aftermath of the chairs’ arrival,\u00a0 words flowed out like water from a broken pipe (um…did I mention we had a broken pipe last week?\u00a0 And are hoping not to have another this week, as the temperatures wander up and down the thermometer?)\u00a0 Less noisy, though.<\/p>\n
So…the new book is sneaking up on 48,000 words, making it almost-nearly certain (barring power outages like we had last week)\u00a0 to make 50,000 by the end of the week.\u00a0\u00a0 Though I need to finish the editors’ revisions by the end of the week too, and that’s an actual deadline.<\/p>\n
Here’s an out-take, a brief scene from Kings that didn’t make it into the book, but was written for “atmosphere.”<\/p>\n
—————————<\/p>\n
Jedrah was scared when the new duke rode away and left a yellow-haired woman who glowed in charge.\u00a0 Glowing was scary.\u00a0\u00a0 He wondered where she kept her red mask.\u00a0\u00a0 At least with the old keep down, and those rooms gone…but the others had said any place could be used.<\/p>\n
“We need to stay out of the stables,” he told the others that night.\u00a0 “She glows.\u00a0 That’s not good.”<\/p>\n
The next day they came down to breakfast and found the woman in the kitchen with Faren Cook.\u00a0\u00a0 Faren Cook was smiling.\u00a0 Even…laughing.\u00a0\u00a0 She didn’t even yell when Maris bumped into a crock of cream and it almost fell.\u00a0 The yellow-haired woman had caught the crock of cream and set it safely in the middle of the table.\u00a0 After breakfast she said, “All right, youngsters, let’s go to the stable.”<\/p>\n
The others looked at Jedrah.\u00a0 “Why?” he asked.<\/p>\n
Her brows went up, wrinkling the shiny circle on her forehead.\u00a0 “To see the horses, of course.\u00a0 Don’t you ride in the mornings?”<\/p>\n
“We’re not big enough,”\u00a0 Maris said.<\/p>\n
“You’ve never ridden?” the woman said.<\/p>\n
“I have,” Jedrah said.\u00a0 “But–but the man who used to help us isn’t here now.\u00a0 They took him away.”<\/p>\n
“I’ll help you,” the woman said.\u00a0\u00a0 She glowed.\u00a0 The glow made Jedrah feel good, but he didn’t trust it.\u00a0 The others, though,\u00a0 were looking at her with smiles.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 “If there aren’t any ponies, you can sit on the big horses and I’ll lead them.”<\/p>\n
They piled out of the kitchen in what Jedrah considered a dangerous hurry, the littlest crowding close to her, others as close as they could get.\u00a0 “No pushing,” she said, when Seli shoved Mardi so he could get closer to her.\u00a0 Seli started to glare at her, but she smiled at him and in a moment he smiled back.<\/p>\n
Before Jedrah realized it, he was sitting on the yellow-haired woman’s red horse–with no saddle–and behind him Maris clung to his waist and behind her Seli.\u00a0\u00a0 He’d never been on a horse this tall.\u00a0\u00a0 The other children were distributed on three other horses.\u00a0 The yellow-haired woman had the lead rope for one of them, and grooms had the lead ropes for the other two.\u00a0\u00a0 The horse he was on had no halter or bridle…the yellow-haired woman must mean the horse to run off and kill them.\u00a0 He would have slid off, but that would have pulled Maris and Seli after him, and it was a long way down…<\/p>\n
Two hours later, with Maris and Seli safely on the ground,\u00a0 he sat the big red horse alone, as the horse circled in a smooth canter.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The woman still glowed, but now he wasn’t afraid.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
What?! I hear you cry.\u00a0 What do new chairs have to do with writing the book? It’s one of the mysteries of the creative mind.\u00a0\u00a0 Suffice to say that throughout our entire marriage (over 41 years now) we have never had “real” kitchen chairs.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 And now we do, replacing mismatched, aging, and uncomfortable folding chairs […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[81,53,115,5],"tags":[112,20,28,107],"class_list":["post-1046","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-kings-of-the-north","category-life-beyond-writing","category-snippet","category-the-writing-life","tag-life-beyond-writing","tag-progress-report","tag-snippet","tag-the-writing-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1046"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1046"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1046\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1052,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1046\/revisions\/1052"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1046"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1046"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1046"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}