David D. LevineScience Fiction Author

Word count: 50267 | Since last entry: 923 | This month: 7012 Still plenty of snow on the ground, but I did get to work on Friday and got out and ran a lot of errands yesterday and today. Also saw Charlie Chaplin in Modern Times. Not quite a thousand words increase in word count today, but I’m going to give myself a red star anyway, because I wrote just over 1000 new words while deleting a couple of paragraphs. Anyway, the story is set in China :-). Wrote two scenes, in which Yao the evil general smashes his cooking pots and Chang the good general despairs. The scene with Chang turned out to be much more of a character moment for both him and the protagonist than I’d expected. This story is turning out really well. The only problem is that it’s 4000 words going on 8000 for a 6000-word-max market. Well, we’ll just have to see how it goes. There’s really only two more scenes to write, but they’re biggies: the siege of the town, and the protagonist’s big revelation and climactic task. (Maybe that last is two scenes.) Plus a short epilogue. Thanks to those who have written in with suggestions on Chinese mythology. I still don’t know what the demons are called in Chinese, but since I am using the English names for everything except places and people I guess I can get away with calling them “demons”. But the Ten Kings of Hell are making a cameo appearance.