David D. LevineScience Fiction Author

Word count: 50267 | Since last entry: 1129 | This month: 8141 Wrote the preparations for the siege, the overwhelming attack, the falling-back to the last redoubt, and the bad guy’s final offer. One of the biggest problems I had was how to describe the action of a fork-cart. This is an ancient Chinese siege weapon that works like a catapult, but instead of throwing a rock it just smashes its arm directly into the wall (with a big fork on the end, which is why it’s called a fork-cart). It was difficult to describe it from the perspective of my protagonist, who has no more experience with catapults than she does with fork-carts, but I think I managed it. Left off with the good guys trapped with their backs against the wall and no hope of victory or escape. Probably another 1000-2000 words to go. Unfortunately, the story is already 5200 words and the maximum for this market is 6000. This could be tough. Maybe I will ask the editor if I can have an exception to the length limit…