The novel-length A Match to Tinder is still rolling along, about ten days a chapter lately.  You’d think going to ground in Orzammar would be safe, but replacing lost resources in a Proving might be a good idea…

Inside Orzammar, I still couldn’t quite get over the scale of the spaces they built. The preliminaries seemed kind of slow and pompous to me; so Sigrun and I added little comments to each other while inside a viewing box that we had to ourselves.

This was my chance while the one official spoke on and on, wearing clothing so stiff I could almost hear it crackle from here when he moved. “Sigrun, Can I ask you something, and you won’t tell Anders?”

She stopped smiling and looked up at me in suspicion. “Maybe. Depends on why.”

This was her other friend too and I was almost afraid to ask. “It’s about Justice. We’ve been avoiding talking about it because, well, I can’t talk to Anders without Justice knowing everything too.”

Disapproval mixed with sadness colored her voice. “Are you planning to destroy Justice? The rumors about Kirkwall are pretty extreme. I don’t see how even an abomination could destroy something that had been solidly built, even by surfacer dwarves. Justice fought more or less like any warrior and couldn’t do any demolition in Amaranthine… What did they do?”

I could feel myself flush. I was part embarrassed, and more guilty. Biting my lip I took a step back to lean against the wall of the box. “I’ve never really asked, but he made something that exploded. They told me some story about a cure for Justice to get my help and later to place it… I think. We saw the a massive stone building fly apart in fire like some stone version of one of my grenades.”

Again I could hear the keening that rang in my head when it happened, and my knees wobbled. “I don’t want to know how he did it, I really don’t want to know. I just have to make sure he doesn’t do it again.”

Sigrun had grenade materials in her office, that would be understood. She didn’t say anything else.

“Anders told me long ago, maybe the day we met, that they could never be separated, not while he lived. But Justice keeps getting more violent and more likely to come out, risking hurting innocents, Their cause is… just.” I had to laugh, and heard a little hysteria in my voice and clicked my teeth when I clenched my mouth. After a moment, I spoke again. “I really don’t want Anders to die. He, they, wanted to die for what they’d done. What abomination knows regret? But Justice isn’t acting like Anders’ few comments from his time with the Wardens. Your comments only seem to confirm that. If they can’t be separated, I hope they can be cured.”

“He is possibly the most powerful healer I’ve ever heard of, excepting that Circle woman who helped fight the Archdemon.” The dwarf looked thoughtful, and thankfully not angry.

“I don’t know if Justice would fight a cure. I think he would. I got frightened by the sheer violence Justice did in one town. There was nothing there of Anders. The dead were ripped apart and he was so cruel. Even Kirkwall wasn’t cruel, but quick. He couldn’t separate that Bartrand we mentioned, so I doubt another healer could help.” I doubted there was a more powerful healer, to heal him.

Running my fingers back through my hair, dislodging the red tie Aveline had given me, I looked down at the floor. “After Justice’s violence, Anders was scared too and told me that I should do whatever I had to do.

“I don’t want to have to kill him.” My voice was a bare whisper by this point.

Patting me on the shoulder, Sigrun said, “I can do it. He’s not the first duster I’ve had to do it for.”

Lifting my head in a rush, I felt my teeth bare. “No, I’ll do it, if it has to be done. I’d have to kill him, kill them twice, because Justice could control Anders’ corpse easily with this many years’ practice.

Full chapter Chapter 25: “Lead Him to a Quiet Place”

(the chapter title was taken from a Mark Twain quote about duels and loving kindness which ends with “… and kill him.”)

Cruising around the web I found some simple rules of thumb for writing.

Henry Watson Fowler

Wrote a composition and negative writing advice manual with his brother, named The King’s English, which is still in print.   There is an online edition here:

The King’s English

But he offered a quite concise version of the book, aimed at journalists and amateur writers.  Most of us here are one or the other, right?  These are his five commandments of his classic:

1. Prefer the familiar word to the far-fetched.
2. Prefer the concrete to the abstract.
3. Prefer the single word to the circumlocution.
4. Prefer the short word to the long.
5. Prefer the Saxon word to the Romance.

Sorry, to anyone who’s been following, but some RL issues followed by a bad flu cam up after New Year’s.  I have managed to continue writing, but I had to wean myself off tumblr.  The firehose of good stuff was just way too distracting.  Instead of posting 3-5 fiction things a month, I did only about six in six months.

I really, really want to finish writing my current tales, and get to writing something original once I’ve cleared the deck of the two big projects.  I have other ones too, like revising my NaNo I wrote the draft of in 2009.  So I am still online but rarely on Tumbr now.  Send me a PM, I check my various sites all daily if they don’t get to my email sooner.

If anyone is following my writing, I’m working on chapter 24 of “A Match to Tinder” a sequel of the Dragon Age 2 storyline, doing a final revision of a Neverwinter 2 sequel. “Choices II: Aftermaths”, along with bits on other projects like planning bits for this year’s NaNo, an original story.