These are one of the unique qualms of this universe that I was able to touch on in this story. It occurred to me that I’ve got so many ideas to play off of this concept, I might have to write an entire series to touch on all of them; there’s certainly more here than would fit in one story, not because I’m too lazy to put them in, but because they wouldn’t fit into the setting or conflict. Draconi has thoughts about something that might allude to this story’s long-term future.

The 10,000-word day still continues to elude me, what with work, laziness, and no idea where it’s going between now and the end, but I’m well on the track to meeting 50,000 words before the month is up. The story itself, however, most likely won’t be finished. I don’t want this book to suffer the same ignored fate as my NaNo from last year, so I’ll probably participate in NaNoFiMo (National Novel Finishing Month) just so I can get the beast finished. If that’s the case, I’ll keep updating this blog right up until the end. Stay tuned!

Anyways, another big excerpt up today, almost an entire chapter. In this one, Phineas embarks on the first step of his journey: trying to find someone who knows a lot about hearts. Unfortunately, though, they’re considered to be pretty eldritch and mysterious, so no one studies them to any great extent. The best bet he has right now is to ask the church.

His search proves fruitless initially, most of the old fogey Clothiers (the names of the priests in the Seamstress Faith; it’s an archaic word for a tailor) think he’s blasphemous or vain or crazy, and dismiss him outright. The only person that agrees to help him is Clothier David Kensington, at the church Phineas encountered in Chapter 2. He’s much more interested in change than any of the other Clothiers Phineas had spoken to, so he’s more keen to help him. So far, I’m enjoying writing for him; he’s smart, he’s funny, and I like the reason I came up with for becoming a Clothier. I hope to see more of him.

After this encounter, though, I’ve set up kind of a conflicting dichotomy for Phineas: Dirk, who just moved into Phineas’ house stack in the Narrows, agrees to help him as well, since he’s learned a lot about hearts on the street. Phineas isn’t sure if to trust him, but he thinks he might be able to provide more stable information from experience than anyone else, even Clothier David. This could be interesting to play with.

Dirk’s having problems, too. He just received a really strange machine from Draconi as soon as he moved in, and he has another “internal dialogue” ( ) with Draconi. Personally, I love writing these little passages; they’re like dialogue, but with this weird edge that knows that it’s not two people talking: one of them just has the other one’s voice in his head. That lets me play around with the adverbs and pace of the conversation a little.

Following this, we’re going to find out Draconi’s big, dark secret, and why he’s such a ruthless bastard.

Also today, I thought of an ending for my book, but between what I’ve already written and this ending is a big void; I have no idea what’s going to happen, literally, after this chapter. NaNoWriMo ends in three days, and I’m stuck. Can you believe it? I’ll probably go back to Virgil and Malcolm and have them do something to move the story along. We’ll have to see when we start to approach 50,000.

But this is because I’ve reached this period in my NaNoWriMo adventure where I go through this week-long stasis where I don’t write anything. It usually occurs around Week 3, when I just can’t be bothered to open the document and put down something.

Don’t worry, though; while this may seem lazy, it does make my Week 4 considerably more exciting. I work better under pressure: new ideas spring up, suddenly and without method, and I’m carried on this wave of madness to 50,000 words. Or 80,000, as the case may be. And we’ve reached that period. The title of this post has sort of a double-meaning.

In today’s excerpt, Phineas comes to understand why it’s so urgent that people should be able to take things off their heart if they need to. He comes to this conclusion when he finds Virgil, skittish and mad, at Malcolm’s house, just after his chance encounter with Jack Draconi, the most ruthless criminal for miles around. He declares exactly why he has to discover this secret, and Cindy, Malcolm and Virgil, despite their skepticism, are behind him all the way.

Meanwhile, Draconi had assessed the level of threat that Phineas might give him. Initially worried that he’s just going to be a Good Samaritan getting in his way, he thinks that his idea of finding out how to unbond folk’s hearts, unlikely and cockamamie as it may seem, is nonetheless worth looking into. Dirk is Draconi’s closest contact with Phineas, so he’s going to plant him as surveillance.

This excerpt closes on a cliffhanger about what Phineas will attempt to do to get started on this journey, and make no mistake, it won’t be an easy one. But I’m not entirely certain exactly how hard it may be…

Meanwhile, Malcolm, who’s stayed home, has had an important encounter of his own. Virgil has wandered out of Blackstone into the south Narrows, where Malcolm lives, and has starting ranting and raving out on the streets. His mental health is obviously deteriorating, but Malcolm was able to placate Virgil’s aimless yelling because he recognized him as the guy that helped him out in the tavern some nights ago. He feels alright about showing Malcolm why he’s gone mad, and he’s quite shocked by the reason. You regular viewers already know what it is, but with any luck, it’s still surprising.

One thing about this passage is the description of a play within the novel. Initially, my description of it was considerably more explicit, but I was finding it distracting and overstuffed, so it was severely condensed. I kept the old passage in a new Scrivener folder in my binder called “Scraps”; I doubt I’ll get much more use out of that folder or that passage, but who knows? I’m meeting my daily quotas, though, so I can afford to clip out fluff at this point. I don’t need any word count bolstering at the expense of my story just yet.

Though I’m looking to exceed 50,000 words and totally finish the story before the month is over. I need to get ahead; perhaps get two or three days ahead, or even try and get to the halfway point of 25,000 before the halfway point of the month, or even 30,000! But let’s not drive our Ferraris before we have a driver’s license, eh?

I’ve also thought of a more interesting role for Dirk as the story reaches its rising action; I’m just mentioning it now for my personal posterity.

As well, none of you are commenting on my excerpts. A lot of people are praising me for the concept and insist I should find a publisher, but if the writing can’t pull off the high concept, what’s the point? I think I’m doing okay, but I’m ultimately not sure the whole idea is coming through, but it’s not the sort of idea that constantly permeates the plot; it’s more like an undercurrent that the story’s elements have to be aware of. It’s certainly not meant to be a laundry list of why I think it’s interesting, but I also don’t want it to seem like a weak aside, either. Hopefully I’ve struck a good balance.

So am I doing alright? Let me know!

This outing, however, will set up the last encounter that will unite all the main characters: the meeting between Phineas, the protagonist, and Jack Draconi, the main antagonist. It remains unclear just what Draconi sees in Phineas, but heavens knows it’s not friendly.

Malcolm either couldn’t or wouldn’t attend the play, possibly because he’s still angry at Phineas for not letting him in on what he’s up to. His absence, though, will play an important role in the next excerpt. With any luck, it will be posted promptly tonight.

Cindy and Phineas discuss what bonding something to your heart really implies, and why people shouldn’t pay for their own mistakes for the rest of their life. But Phineas has called into question whether what your personality already was premeditates what you’ll bond to your heart later. It’s a question of predestination.

Though it’s hard to predestine something when you really have no idea what’s going to happen.

There will probably be another entry towards the end of the day today. Stay tuned!

When we last left our heroes, Cindy was just about to place a magnifying lens on her heart. At the outset of this excerpt, she does, setting her plot into motion. Malcolm also talks Phineas into coming with him to a boxing match in Blackstone. This sets a date with destiny.

After dinner, Cindy leaves her house in the North Heights and wanders across The Narrows to Blackstone, where she’s never been. She initially saw it out her bedroom window as a “shadow land against the end of the world”, which intrigued her on a more meaningful level than she just wanted to go “slumming”. Much of the excerpt describes the changing setting as she goes to Blackstone.

Once she’s there, she’s happened upon by Dirk, who had just recently been finally absorbed by the Draconi mafia, if you recall. At the moment, that seems kind of irrelevant, but it’ll be a big deal later. Seeing a vulnerable young society girl lost in his neighbourhood, his heart tells him exactly what he should do: exploit her for all she’s got.

At this point, this reminds me of the scene in Disney’s “Aladdin” where, after Princess Jasmine runs away, she gets on the bad side of a merchant who, in Arabian law, gets to cut off her hand. Aladdin whisks in to talk the merchant out of rage, and now two characters in the story are acquainted.

Though unlike Aladdin, who fabricates a story about how Jasmine is mad and didn’t know what she was doing, Phineas doesn’t feel like he has to make up anything. He pretty much makes like she was with him the whole time, and in a display of quick wit, Cindy goes along with it, even if at this point, Phineas and Cindy don’t know each other. The stranger that’s offering to help is a better bet than the one that wants to bleed you for $170 just to walk you home.

Dirk tries to dissuade Phineas from taking her away, but Phineas deflates him by defining how fundamentally absurd his offer is. Dirk, who would usually be a cunning adversary, is flabbergasted and makes an ass of himself. There’s a particular reason for this that we’ll get into later; some of the more sharp of you might already know what it is.

I had planned this encounter in the outline stage, because I thought it would be better for Phineas and Cindy to meet like this rather than have a silly “meet cute”, where they bump awkwardly into each other and are at first nervous before they find each other; comic fluff. This encounter certainly has more meat to it; it helps define Phineas as clever, Dirk as conniving, and Cindy as stronger than she looks, with a little help. Though I eventually want to define Dirk as not a fundamentally bad person, particularly as the story goes on, where Draconi has him spy on Phineas.

The excerpt ends with the opening of the next chapter, which starts with the boxing match between “Brickfist” Bricklin and “Massive” Malcolm Mulligan; also a place where Cindy didn’t think she would have found herself, but it all helps to her growth as a character.

In the next chapter, though, I face a challenge; I have to define Malcolm as a very intelligent character, which will offset against his huge, brutish appearance and thick accent. The pieces will probably fall into place when I actually get there, but still, it’s something to think about.

It’s the morning after Phineas put the diamond on his heart, and he’s come out to greet the new day. Malcolm, Phineas’ best pal, is also introduced in this chapter; he didn’t have a story in Chapter One since he doesn’t really do anything to his heart that would need to be introduced (yet). At the moment, his appearance is expositional, but it’s set to expand quickly. Malcolm is my “accent” character; I like writing some character’s dialogue in a funny accent. Malcolm is supposed to sound a bit Irish, if the red hair and love of boxing isn’t a tipoff.

One of Phineas’ characteristics is that he’s very perceptive, sort of like me, which gives a lovely excuse to write detailed, lavish descriptions of things, which I quite enjoy. I’m worried, though, that my diction might be a bit heavy-handed, especially when I’m describing the Seamstress Cathedral. But no matter; it’ll work out one way or another. What do you think?

I also made Cindy’s part of the chapter less vivid, making it seem a bit like the way things are described are relevant to each character, possibly to their level of involvement or observance, or just how they are. Cindy is much less perceptive and detail-crazy than Phineas, so her segment of the story reflects that. Or maybe it’s just that I’m getting tired and don’t feel like extrapolating on the appearance of her bedroom would do much good.

I stopped right before Cindy puts the magnifying glass on her heart, which imbues here with an insatiable curiosity. Later on, Phineas and Malcolm will also get together for a few drinks and some conversation, and Phineas will start to discover the ill ramifications of his heart-related decisions. I’ll start light, of course.

With any luck, I’ll be able to post tomorrow’s entry before midnight, so I’ll technically have two entries for “today”. Gotta get into the habit of getting work done in the morning, since now my nights aren’t usually free.