The second week of NaNoWriMo is over and my writing pace slowed down a bit. I’ve written 21K this week which means I’m still on target for the NaNo goal, as long as my pace picks up in the upcoming week. I’m also only on chapter nine, soooo scared about what the final wordcount for this book is going to be. 

Feelings and Assassins

Plotwise, I finally moved on from the Vasily Saga and onto Part II, the Sinner Eaters aka my big bad Demon monarchs. Last update, I was struggling with Sophia’s inability to manage her own emotions and her refusal to communicate with her partners because of her fear that communication would ruin their relationship. Well, we moved on beyond that point, some secrets were shared, lots of tears were shed, and I think Sophia, Yidiresi (also known as Dmitri), and Vasily reached an understanding that could blossom into a romantic relationship again. Hopefully…otherwise I have to rethink a large part of the book. I wanted to do a tragic doomed lovers story but it may turn more into a doomed friendship/queerplatonic relationship, which still works. I think it just changes some mini-details and plot mechanisms, so I guess we’ll see how it develops. 

After all the emotional melodrama, we finally moved onto hunting assassins who are hunting Vasily. I had fun drawing this questionable map of the theater where Vasily and his co-conspirators laid a trap.

Of course it goes poorly and they have to escape in the sewers where something is waiting for Vasily (he’s very popular with the worst of society).

Demons!!!

We end on a cliffhanger and jump back in time a few months to meet the Sin Eaters. They are three Demons who have proclaimed themselves leaders of the Demon people and are hunting for Vasily because he supposedly has a weapon that can kill God. They call themselves Sin Eaters because they eat the sins of God.

There is Rezan (one of his many names), who is the “king” and maybe the first Demon aka Shardith, the servant/potential son of God who rebelled and was thrown into the Void. Or he’s just a talented mime/actor/baker who had the misfortune of being turned and is making the best of it. 

There is Danijela, a recently turned Demon who is the “queen” and Rezan’s beloved, although I’m still figuring out how devoted they are to each other at this point in the story. Demons don’t retain their memories once they turn, but she has vague flashes of flowers and so she has a soft spot for flower arrangements and plants, particularly the white tulip. She is following Rezan’s lead at this point because where else can she go, but I’m still working out her own feelings about Rezan’s plans.

Finally, there is Yeremi, a recently turned Demon, but he is the werewolf variant whereas Rezan and Danijela are more aristocratic demons. Yeremi is coarse, rude, and extremely violent, but he is completely devoted to Rezan. He will literally do anything Rezan asks of him, even if it means bodily harm and death. Unlike Danijela, I don’t think he’s looking for more than being a Demon and killing.

Technically we’ve already met Rezan in the prologue, but since this is the first time the reader gets to know him on a personal level and get a better sense of his plans and motives, I want to get this introduction scene perfect. I’ve rewritten it three times because I just haven’t figured out the best way to approach the scene. First, I wrote it from the perspective of Timofey interviewing a survivor of the Demon’s attack, but that allowed Timofey to dominate the narrative around the Demons. I thought it was better to have the Demons introduce themselves, so I tried to rewrite the scene so it was told from Rezan’s perspective, but something is missing. I’m frontloading all the details about what a Demon looks like and is, when I need to introduce the unholy trio and sprinkle the Demon specific details throughout the scene. 

The one thing I’m going to have fun playing with is that there are three demons: Rezan, Danijela, and Yeremi and God has three “children” or special servants (depending on which religion you prescribe to): Amal Baris (always God’s Son), Shardith (the fallen servant/sometimes God’s son who creates the Demon people), and Death (sometimes God’s daughter who creates the Shadow people). In fact there are a lot of trios in this book: Rezan, Danijela, and Yeremi; Vasily, Sophia, and Yidiresi; Rashid, Nodira, and Turar; etc. It’ll be fun figuring out what it means and how the Church misinterprets those connections/relations.  

So, that’s how my NaNo is going. How is your NaNo going? What are some wins from your second week? What are some of the challenges you’ve encountered? Goals for this week?