All three are very nice, Sophie, but I especially like the second one.

Here's a wee one:

A chill runs up his spine before he consciously registers the dread sound. He locates it, and backs away off the road as the shrouded figures shamble past. The bell, tied with a bit of twine about the neck of the first figure, tolls dully at every step. Muffled in layers of cloth wound and fastened haphazardly about them, all features that might still linger beneath those wrappings hidden from view, and ringing their warning as they go, the lepers pass. And village folk and crofter alike stand aside and grant them passage, hearts torn between pity and fear.

Another bells. Mostly because I haven't played with her in a while.

She strolls down the street, registering, but not noticing, the hurried pedestrians along the buildings, seeking the safety of their homes. She revels in the utter lack of any feeling toward them—protectiveness, duty, pity, hunger—all washed away in her new-found freedom. Nowhere she has to be, no-one she needs to call, nothing she has to do, apart from eat and be indoors come morning. Then, she stops dead, as the bells began to ring, first from behind her, then all around. There is one other thing she has to do: Know when to leave.

These are all so cool. I had no idea there were so many bells in our lives until this topic came up.

Topic suggestion for Teppy, not for the next one because it's kinda similar, but someday could we do drums?

Massive re-write of Lucy commenced. I've pushed the beginning of the story back from 1810 to 1809, since it makes critical plot points in Anna more plausible (see discussion in Natter). I completed eradicated a character I adored (Cordelia) because I realized she was just stealing space that could go to characters who are actually in conflict with Lucy. The hero has gone from a plain nouveau riche gentleman to a baronet whose maternal grandfather was an earl, though he's still nouveau riche. It's still in first person, but I'm putting some sections in the hero's first person POV so we'll have his perspective too.

It's weird. All my previous edits have been polishes and tweaks, and now I'm changing things that felt nearly as immutable as real history.

Congratulations, Susan. I hear you on the nearly immutable.

You know in school, when you memorized a poem? Or in Sunday School when you memorized Bible verses for a program? And when you lost your place halfway through, you couldn't pick up where you left off, you had to start over? That's the trouble I've had with mine. The way the first quarter of the book is written has made deep grooves in the surface of my brain and there's no way I can deviate from those grooves on my own.

I have no trouble deep-sixing whole swathes of text, I'm not really going to fight for phrasing or even characters that are really backstory. I once lost an entire third of a poem on an editor's sayso, and the resultant poem was transcendent! Well, to me, anyway. The editor was startled at how easily I slashed my precious words. So this isn't that sort of reluctance, it's just I can't tell the forest from the trees. Deb? Do you have the name and address of a good book doctor?

Bev, I just wish I was qualified to do it for you, since I owe you, and since I love the way you write.

Alas, the genre precludes my utility; I'm a fantasy moron. Completely ignorant of the tropes. All the feedback I *was* able to give was specifically on the characters, and even there, I felt like a fraud half the time, since I could only look and crit on the level of their believability.

Whay I need is somebody to read the whole honkin' thing--I think you only got half--and point with scissors: "Here, here, here, and here. Make them gone. Now make it tidy."

And I could do that, willingly, gladly. I've also been advised to lop it into two books. Which is a bare possibility, I'm not sure there's enough actual story there for two books. But I've also been told by various members of my group to add sex, remove violence, add magic. I backed off long enough to realize that each of them was advising from the POV of their own reading preference, and shelved all those suggestions, along with the ms.

It's no wonder it's been in a drawer for a couple years. Maybe that's where it should stay.

But just by the way? You are nowhere a moron, ma'am. And I love you for the compliment.

No, I really am a fantasy moron. It's so completely alien to me that it might as well be in another language. Example: a few years back, my MIL (who loves fantasy and reads it voraciously) gave me magazine piece to read. I dutifully read it, lifted an eyebrow, and made a polite noise.

It was a satire. Apparently, it was an over-the-top parody.

I couldn't tell it from the real thing.

Fantasy moron am I.

bwah...in this, Deb is me.

I get fantasy, but I'm not a good big picture editor. (Yet. Maybe going through it a time or two on my own work will change all that.) I'm better at line edits--polishing sentences, catching little continuity glitches--and strengthening scenes.

Bev, fantasy is my genre and I'd love to help, but I just can't realistically commit to it right now. I already feel terrible about the fact that I didn't finish my beta for Deb in time for her revision process, and I don't want to screw up a second time.

t feeling overwhelmed and guilty