Eva Forge and the city of Ash

I had a pretty good weekend. On Saturday my wife and I went to fly a kite. Our town is celebrating its 150th anniversary, and as part of that they organized an attempt at breaking a world record for most people flying kites. We were shooting for 1000, had 1100 sign up, but the wind sucked and it sounds like we only managed about 800 at the critical moment of counting. That's okay, though. We had fun.

The only thing that sucked about this weekend was that we broke our shower again. Well, not exactly. Turns out the contractor used the wrong kind of grout on the floor tiles in the shower, and it all washed out, so now the tiles are loose. They came by today, had a "d'oh" moment, and will be re-grouting our shower tomorrow sometime.

I spent a lot of time working on an outline for the next book thing. I have publishers asking for this thing, but I don't want to distribute outlines that aren't up to my potential. If that makes sense. So I'm still polishing it. I originally started the project thinking I would write a grand old epic fantasy, but I'm pretty sure I'm not cut out for such a thing. What I've ended up with is.... what? Epic fantasy cut with urban fantasy wrapped in steampunk and shot through with crime noir. Something like that. Mostly I'm just not letting myself be bound by old conventions. I want there to be elevated trains. I want the city to float. I don't want mounts, mounted combat or electricity. I don't want the main character to have to travel as part of her quest. I don't want quests. I want a single POV character. I want people in normal clothes, but also armor, but also sunglasses. I want punks with guns. I want a paladin with a double handed sword, incanting the rites of her dead god as she runs through the rain, chased by some kind of clockwork beastie. I want a drowned goddess floating through sewers. I want airships powered by tornadoes.

Anyway. It's going to be interesting.