… isn’t easy, but neither is landing a plane.

In stories as in chess, the opening and the endgame open up abysses under our feet. Desperate to stuff all of the important parts into Necromancer and Barbarian before National Novel Writing Month wrapped, I jumped ahead to the crucial fight scene in a bog, between Our Heroine and the serial killer whose victims she has been interviewing for the last five years.

It’s messy. I keep making things up, and then wanting it to be over, and realizing that I’ve opened the way for yet one more twist before we resolve things. Making trouble for the characters creates the plot.

At this point, I want the plot to be over. I can see my ending glimmering in the distance; for once, the problem doesn’t state itself as “what happens in the end” but “how do we get there?” Plot is architecture; it cages the tigers and forces them into proximity.

Someone’s going to get eaten by the end of all this. Someone already has been eaten, by the bog, but that’s not the end of the story. Not yet. Stick with me a bit yet.