When it feels like the middle slog, but it isn’t

I got down a massive amount of words today. It all centered around a large sea battle and the aftermath of that battle.

The fight was exciting, and it was a joy to unleash Serang and have some fun with her. I’m excited for you guys to meet her, and have a cool Lisa Burton poster planned out for her character.

This fight also revealed those fu dogs I was muddling over a week ago. Damn, they’re scary.

The fight took a heavy toll on the crew, and that’s where it’s feeling a bit like a slog. There are issues I have to deal with now. People don’t take a hit, then tap dance off to the next exciting part. They have to deal with losses both mentally and physically.

This story has a big cast, and I can bounce from character to character to keep it from being a big dose of sadness all at once.

There are some things to do between here and the next land stop that will ramp up the tension, but not in a giant jellyfish kind of way.

It won’t take long, a couple of scenes, maybe a chapter, but I was hoping to get through that part today.

I think I’ll throw in some wildlife just to remind everyone this is a fantasy environment. They are going to harvest fresh water from an iceberg, and I’ll probably have some arctic rays swimming ahead of the ship. Make them white like ice or something. This ice will also be important to the severely wounded fellow that’s dragging things down now. (Ice is a painkiller, and useful for fevers.)

I really wanted to get to the next land part of the story, but that won’t happen until tomorrow.

I did a bit of research to get ahead of the next section. It was about coins; this kind of coins.

At one time these were called cash. Not like we use the term, but these are three cash. Kind of like three dollars, marks, or francs. (Yeah, I know about the Euro.)

I thought it was interesting, and I have some fun ideas about these coins involving the root monsters. They do a lot of thieving after dark in cities, and it keeps up the ships coffers. They call money “clink clink.”

It will look something like this: “Clink clink gone bogus. Shoot hole. Shiny all gone.”

I also did some western bastardization of eastern words in the story. They are heading for a city called Cheng Shi Hua. The pirates insist upon calling it Chingy Ha. This pisses Serang off, and she’s not someone you want to piss off.

Now that we’ve seen her in action, I’m looking forward to giving everyone a brief glimpse into her tragic backstory. I should probably never use that word, but that’s what it is. I won’t go back and tell her tale, just allude to bits of it so readers can interpolate the rest.

It’s about time for baseball and beer around here. I may add some more after the game. I haven’t committed a WWI for a while, and it might be interesting. (Writing while intoxicated.)

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