Most of a novel is middle.

That’s where I am right now, and it’s both slow and terrifying. Slow, because it’s the middle, and I’m no longer propelled by the manic joy of the Beginning, where we set up all the ordnance that’s going to explode later. Everyone’s on stage by now, and the fantastical has become workaday. Because really, none of us spend a lot of time being astonished. Humans, like all other creatures, seek homeostasis, so we’ll adapt to nearly anything, no matter how strange. My tale should be Gee Whiz in Stereo, POV a resurrected teenager from the Iron Age and a forensic artist with talents as a medium and necromancer, but now we’re in the doldrums after the drama. Among other things:

Witnesses on the other side of the Veil are just as unreliable as living ones. Our Heroine is no closer to identifying the serial killer than at the beginning, in spite of the chilling hint that it’s probably someone she knows.

The isolation ward is one of the most boring places on earth. Less than 1000 words into their quarantine, and they’re climbing the walls while waiting to see if a 2000-year-old pathogen might have been resurrected along with Our Hero.

Our Heroine was not particularly flattered to be mistaken for a goddess, particularly not when it took the form of Our Hero taking off his clothes and announcing that he was ready to do his marital duty for the sake of the crops. In front of the doctors, the nurses, her professional mentor, and assorted hospital staff. Very embarrassing, particularly after she set him straight on who she wasn’t.

Everyone is busy Not Talking about this incident, Our Hero most notably.

Whatever this thing is, it’s not a standard-issue romance. What I have figured out is that my two main characters are nerds, and this means a fair bit of awkwardness. I feel as if I’m marking time until something interesting happens, while they shuffle their feet, avert their eyes, and figure out how to pass the time.

Too much like real life, even if it does take place in a universe where ghosts, resurrected sacrifices, and time-slips are all taken for granted just as soon as they happen more than once.