Most of my work lately has been devoted to editing. With two books due out in the next months, editing is critical-- requiring multiple read-throughs each with different purposes. When I write a book, I might write 5000 words in a day (keep in mind, a lot of thought went into these stories before I touch a keyboard). I write fast to stay with the flow. But that means I can forget the order of things when I leave it from day to day. Editing, faster than I write, I find where I lost consistency, where I wrote something, forgot I wrote it, and wrote it again. Editing catches that-- most of the time.
This is an excerpt from the rough draft, which means it might yet change before the book is out August 5th-- Echoes from the Past.
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Undressing
in the dark, she put on a light nightgown before pulling back the covers to lie
on her bed. She stilled her breathing and looked up at the sky through the open
window. April, for a desert, could be surprisingly cold at night, but this year
she had already been able to sleep with the windows open.
Although
they were not yet installed, she had ordered screening, which would keep out
the bats that had occasionally flitted inside after insects. She didn’t mind
bats—at least not the ones that didn’t swoop low over her head. Still, she’d be
happy when the screens were in place.
The
stars were particularly vibrant with a new moon. Various patterns came into
view, most vivid was Orion and his sword—a warrior in the sky. Soon she would
be seeing them from the Cibecue.
She
thought back over her day and the negative experience with Princess. She
supposed the stranger had been right—even if curtly said. She had been foolish
to ride her for the first time with the sidesaddle when she was not that
comfortable riding even astride. She had just felt it would work out, as she
had equally believed going to the Cibecue would.
She
tended to jump into things, often without thinking enough as to the
consequences. She had been assured by others that it was a character flaw. Perhaps,
but it also gotten her to where she was—a woman willing to step out on her own,
hire a crew, and investigate the unknown—even more when it was the unknown
within her own soul and a journey that, in many ways, would be a solitary one.
In
her dreams, she had seen the dwellings she sought. Although the name of the
place had never been in her dreams, she had found it through reading the works
of Adolph Bandelier. An ethnographer, he had explored the region and written
detailed descriptions of the various prehistoric dwellings found there. From
his words, she had believed the Cibecue would be where the homes would be
waiting.
Or
they would not. That was the issue for her. In some ways, she as much hoped the
dreams had been silly and not some true view into the past. They had things to
them that very much made her not want to find they had been of real events.
When she finally reached the room, when the pot was not in the corner, when the
grave didn’t really exist, maybe then she could put away the dreams as childish
and not of meaning. The man, with the dark intense eyes, he wouldn’t have ever been
real.
