Okay, I confess: I’m having such a delightful time writing Arlyn’s story.

I did start off dictating it this morning because I wanted to get through some words, but it ended up not working. I lost a bunch of time. While that did feel like a setback at first, it ended up being okay. I would’ve had to go back and correct a bunch of the text anyway. Plus, it gave my mind an idea of the direction that I wanted to go.

So, when I finally did have a chance to sit down and write, I already knew where I was going with the next little bit. I got that out of my system. Then, when I had more time to write in the evening, I picked the story up and it took an unexpected turn. Believe me, I hadn’t even thought about this when I was doing the dictation earlier in the day. It was such a delightful surprise. What a thrilling situation it is to put Arlyn in.

He’s such a different character from Steigan, who is very flatline in his emotions, at least in the beginning, and is a very truthful character. Steigan is extremely straight-laced when it comes to his duty which he got from his training with Arlyn. But Arlyn had life experiences which made him that way to pass on certain rules and lessons to Steigan. Arlyn wasn’t always that way. He had to live through some things, make some mistakes, and have some time to gain the wisdom of clarity to see what he could have done differently.

I’ve always said that I want my children to be better than me. I’ve tried to raise them by being open with mistakes I’ve made and how I wished I could have done it differently. I really feel, and have been off the belief for a long time, that Arlyn tried to do the same thing (sort of) with Steigan. For Arlyn to feel this way, he had to fail as a dominus sometime in his life. But how did that epic fall take place? What were the circumstances?

A couple times today I’ve had ideas about what was going to happen and who Arlyn was going to meet. Let’s just say that neither of my first two ideas landed. I didn’t see this one coming. Granted, I haven’t actually written it yet, so I still might be in for a surprise, but I have ideas of the next step on the path. It’ll be fun to see what happens.

Cheers!