I am torn this year - planning ahead for what I want to accomplish in November.  I have not yet finished Gideon’s Curse, the novel I wrote the year before last.  The reason I post about this here is that “The Preacher’s Marsh,” the novella that ends this collectoin, is a portion of “Gideon’s Curse.” The novel languishes at 50,000 words.  That’s what I get for not completing the whole thing at the time.  It’s a troublesome book, though.  It covers generations of family members.  Some of those generations contain characters carrying on a family name, and so it gets confusing.  Time warps oddly.

What I’d like to do is to finish that book this year, but there is only one way that can happen.  I have to start from the beginning, revise the chapters up to the point where I quit, and then write on from there.  It’s the only way to get it fresh in my mind, and it’s the only way I can be sure I iron out the twists and turns that bedeviled me the first time I set out to write it.

Unless something changes - I do have a Stargate Atlantis novel to write soon (if all goes well I’ll know tomorrow) and I also have a novel following up on THE SPIRT when that movie comes out, if all goes well..if one of those drops into place at the right time, Nanowrimo might be the key.

For now, the plan is to put Gideon’s Curse to rest - and it means I’ll have to write a 100,000 word novel so that I meet the 50,000 new words during Nanowrimo goal.  I can do that.  There is a little known clause that says when you’ve successfully completed the challenge a few times, you can work on works in progress…but it’s still 50,000 words.

Just to get you all in the mood…here is the prlogue I wrote a few years back:

GIDEON’S CURSE

David Niall Wilson

Prologue:

PROLOGUE

Desdemona knelt in the loamy soil in the center of the old church. What had once been a wood plank floor had rotted away or been torn apart by encroaching vines. The swamp called to its own. The last rays of afternoon sun filtered in through the cracks in the walls and spider-webbed the interior with dancing shadows and flame-red trails of light.

The broken altar canted to one side, but remained upright, and behind it on the wall a hand-carved statue of the Messiah stared down with vacant eyes. Candles were arranged in a semi-circle about her, and she lit them, one by one, ignoring the pain as her single wooden match burned down to sear her fingertips.

Desdemona stared at the candle directly before her, willing herself to sway with the motion of the flame, catching the breath and pulse of the swamp. She felt it seep up through the moist earth, rise through her bones and reach out to her heart and mind. It chanted in time with the rhythm of the swaying limbs on the low-slung trees. She felt the caress of serpent tongues on her thighs and gasped as a cold shiver of air forced its way through a crack in the burned wood of the wall and lodged in her spine.

She groped blindly beside her, felt the damp earth, and then her fingers closed on the rim of a cracked, soiled pottery bowl. She plunged her hand in, gripped the dry, brittle handful of chalk-white bones and clutched them to her breast. A low, keening sound rose from deep in her throat, and she closed her eyes. She rocked up and back and leaned so close to the candle flames on the forward motion that a strand of her hair caught the flame. It flashed away in a smoky puff, and she hissed in pain as the heat reached her scalp.

The last of the day’s light faded and the light of the candles encased her in a luminous yellow cocoon. Her knees trembled, and the palsy shot up her frame, quivered through her legs and over her too-thin hips. Her ribs shook so violently that a fit of coughing threatened to expel her lungs. Still she rocked and clung to the bones. They cut into her flesh until small droplets of blood leaked out through the cracks between her fingers.

With a gasp she released them. Her eyes snapped open and she watched them fall. They tumbled and rattled as they arched toward the dirt. Some bounced off the bases of the candles. Her eyes roved over the pattern, picking it from the odd structures and the seemingly random angles. Her lips moved, but she didn’t speak. One bone balanced, canted on its edge as if unable to drop and define its message. She reached out, uncertain if she meant to snatch it up before it could fall, or force it one way or the other.

She never touched it. The ground rippled beneath her. A small cascade of dirt rolled against the bone and it toppled. She pulled her hand back as if snake-bit and cried out.

A sliding, sinuous vibration rose through the earth. The swamp released a burp of warm gas and hideous stench. Desdemona closed her eyes and her vision cleared. She met the deep, piercing gaze of a familiar face, a face last seen in its coffin. The eyes were dead, the sockets half empty, and the flesh eaten from the bone as though that familiar skull, those beloved features, had been dipped in acid and left to melt and crumble inward.

Desdemona leaped to her feet. She glanced one way, then the other, and tried to orient herself. Then she lunged for the door. The candles continued to burn, and the bones mocked her from the dirt floor of the church. She clawed her way out the door and ran. Something hard and brittle crackled underfoot - as if the bones moved and scratched her feet. Something had called to them, and they answered. There was something in the wind; Desdemona needed to see it, and to know. If it was her time, at last, she had to prepare.

She crashed through the swamp, legs flashing, limbs and branches slashing painfully at her flesh. She focused on a point beyond the pain, a time beyond the swamp. She turned and saw lights glimmering at the edge of her vision. In the second she was distracted the ground rippled a final time. She screamed. Her mind filled with images of the bones, growing and stretching, grasping at her ankles. She felt something clawing its way free to prevent her from reaching her goal. A sickly, greenish glow floated behind the mist that rose from the cool, moist ground. She broke free with a loud curse.

Lifeless eyes burned with greenish light in her mind. Haunted by her dead son’s face, she ran toward the edge of the swamp and the migrant camp. She ran toward her grandson and the hateful, devil’s plantation. Behind her, in the leaping light of candles trapped in the swamp’s breath, bone shadows danced.