Well, this one was so much fun to write. It flowed pretty quickly. I had the general idea and trusted myself to come up with the gripping battle sequences so I just put my head down and started writing.
The most pleasing thing that came out of the creative process was Scene 3 with Spark and Ember. Their scene was not in the orginal idea but I had set up a pattern of breaking apart the Tormangi action with Dorsitt's small scenes. In a flash of inspiration that none of us creative types can explain, I came up with the idea of the floating fortress and the women leading their own portion of the attack. Spark and Ember just rolled off my fingertips and worked from the first moment. That whole scene came along quickly and required very little revision. Yes, killing Ember made me get all misty eyed but that's what the story required.
Another interesting scene was the first one with the destruction of the Rennon ship. The first version didn't include Gamble at all and was intended to be just a mysterious destruction scene. It was later when I got into Gamble's scenes that I relaized I needed to introduce him earlier. That led to the conversation between him and his brother that I used to set up some context. It's an example of how an original idea (for the spooky and mysterious destruction of the ship) turned out to not work once the larger direction of the story came into focus.
Dorsitt's scene on the top of the building went through several revisions. I had given a much larger part to his assistant but decided that it just detracted from the storyline of Gamble's attack. So the assistant was reduced to a short speaking role and then I disappeared him. I try to keep these stories around 5000 words and that rooftop scene just started to get away from me so I cut it down.
The last scene was the big reveal and helped continue the overall plot that these stories are setting up. Shann is Conn's sister. Conn was the hero in the first story I wrote, "The Observatory". Spoiler alert: She's the chaos agent Conn and Korll talk about in their last conversation. But that whole idea is also evolving in my head so I might create a few detours. More to follow.
Well, that's it for the author's note. By the by, this story got its final revision and this note was written while I was sitting in a hotel room in Houston with nothing much on the schedule. I've got a free weekend coming up before I return home so I might start another story while I'm here. Maybe some kind of local Houston thing will make it into the next one.
-JD
