Flash Preview Friday

For the rest of the year, the first Friday of each month is going to be a preview of Power Unbound, book two of the Dream of Asarlai trilogy. I’ll post between 500 and 1000 words each time, to give you a teaser as to what happens in the next book.

Power Unbound is the story of Ione Hammond Gorton and Stephen O’Malley and how they manage to fall in love and commit to each other as the world of the gadda starts to implode around them thanks to Asarlai and the Forbidden Texts.

Here’s where we meet up with Ione again, dealing with her son Jack (who is my favourite character in the whole series).

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Ione Gorton snapped the lid shut on the plastic container and looked on the results of her morning of effort with satisfaction. There was a large chocolate mud cake – her mother-in-law’s favourite – and her father-in-law’s preferred potato and pumpkin scones. To keep Jack satisfied on the trip to the farm, she had a container of choc chip cookies and caramel fudge while for Mark there was the ubiquitous currant squares.

She traced her finger over the lid, a half-smile twisting her lips. Every once and a while, she did something that brought memories of Patrick to the forefront of her mind. Currant squares had been her husband’s favourite, and as a teenager she’d made them whenever he and Mark went away on a trip together. Her brother always thought she’d made them just for him. She’d confessed the reality to his best friend on their first date.

It had been more than seven years since Patrick died and still, there were moments where she missed him with a pain that brought tears to her eyes.

She brushed her finger over her cheeks and went to find the one person who could always make her feel better.

Jack was sitting on his bedroom floor, surrounded by piles of computer games. His small face was ping-ponging between the two he was holding. He looked up at her, his nose scrunched up.

‘I can’t decide,’ he said. ‘I’m only part way through Doom 4, but if I finish it and then I’ll have nothing to do, but if I start The Mighty Thor then I might not finish it and then I’ll have two games to finish, not just one.’

‘I’m astounded you’re taking just one game,’ Ione said, moving a pile of games aside to kneel down.

‘I’m not.’ Jack looked back at the two titles in his hand. ‘These are my serious games. I’m taking other games for entertainment.’

Star love him, Ione thought with a smile. She certainly did. ‘What other game?’

‘Well, I’ve got my Nintendo DS so I’m taking Super Mario Galaxy Two and Warioware – DYI and I’m taking Rock Band and the PS3 for Grandpa, cause he likes that you know.’

A suspicion began to dawn on Ione. ‘Have you packed?’

‘Yep, see?’ Jack waved his hand at the large suitcase on his bed.

Ione went over and opened it and stared at the collection of electronic drums, guitars, microphones and games systems. ‘Um, Jack …’

‘What?’ He didn’t look at her, intent on making his decision.

‘While I can see that you have your entertainment needs well and truly covered and I congratulate you for being so thorough, I’d like to know what you’re going to wear for the next two weeks. You aren’t going to wear those day and night, are you?’ She pointed to the jeans and jumper he had on.

‘’course not.’ Jack frowned at her. ‘I packed pyjamas.’

Ione looked closer and saw that indeed, his Godzilla print flannelette pyjamas had been squashed down the side of the case. ‘You need more clothes than this, Jacky-boy.’

‘They won’t fit.’

‘Then you’re leaving some of this behind.’ She started to pull the instruments out.

‘But Mum!’ Jack jumped to his feet. ‘Grandpa loves RockBand.’

After a hard day in the fields, Paddy Gorton was more likely to want to collapse in front of the television than to rock it out on a plastic guitar. That’s if Susie would even allow the raucous noise in her house. ‘Then your grandfather can get his own. Where are all the clothes that I washed for you yesterday?’

‘There.’ Jack pointed to the floor at the end of his bed. Ione looked and saw a pile of material, all twisted together and pushed into the corner.

‘Patrick Jack Gorton.’

‘I’m too little to pack for myself.’

Ione looked at her eight-year-old, very intelligent son and snorted. ‘Yesterday you said you were too old for me to pack for you. I wanna do it Mum, I’m old enough.’ She mimicked his words.

He looked at her with big, solemn blue eyes. Patrick’s eyes. ‘I’m a kid. I can’t be trusted.’

It was hard to be angry at him when all she wanted to do was laugh and hug the stuffing out of him. ‘Let’s make a deal. You can take Guitar Hero and the guitar, but the drums and the microphone are making way for some actual clothes.’

‘All right.’

‘Now, you go pick those clothes up and fold them.’

‘You’d do that better than me.’

‘You’re never going to get better if you don’t practice.’

‘I love you, Mum.’ He fluttered his eyelashes up at her.

She laughed and kissed him. ‘Fold. Now.’

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Next month I’ll introduce you to Stephen O’Malley, the man destined to heal Ione’s lonely heart.

How I worked through the edits of book two

So, on March 12, I had a telephone conversation with my publisher. In it, she laid out the weaknesses she saw in book two of The Dream of Asarlai. She didn’t have any issues with the story I’d presented, the way the plot developed or anything like that. Her concerns were character based, and pretty much boiled down to two things: a) we need to see more of Maggie and Lucas, the main characters from book one, and b) Mark, Ione’s brother needed to be developed more because he felt a bit plonked in there.

At the same time, my heart sank and ideas started to pop. It involved a lot of re-writing, but could also provide a whole lot of interesting developments and potential for drama.

Once the call ended, I sat down and started making notes. Solving the Mark problem seemed fairly easy to me – introduce him earlier in the story in a much calmer, more friendly scene so that we can get more of a sense of him and his nuances before he cracks its and causes his poor sister no end of grief.

As for bringing Maggie and Lucas into the story, the obvious answer lay in the very strong friendship between the two women – I just needed to up the ante a little in a couple of places, have Maggie and Lucas become Ione’s support network for that time and bam – problem solved.

The answer lay in a dramatic event that occurs in the first quarter of the book. In the earlier version of that story, that event didn’t impact on Ione that much. It didn’t take too much tweaking for it to have a major impact on her and force her to go stay with Maggie and Lucas for a while (ah, computers – even in world of magic, they’re a pain in the arse).

However, that caused another issue – this event was what initially brought Ione and Stephen together when he went to stay with her. How was I supposed to have that relationship developing when Ione wasn’t there any more?

As often happens in writing, the solution to that problem lay in the direction I’d decided to take. By having Ione more severely impacted by the event, an immediate connection between she and Stephen developed (he was also badly affected by it). It helped take their relationship from initial attraction to confidants very quickly, and meant there was a tie between them even though Ione wasn’t there. All I then had to do was play on Stephen’s good-boy nature and have him offer to have Ione back there at night time if that was what she wanted and bang – I had Ione hanging with Maggie and Lucas during the day, then developing an increasingly intense relationship with Stephen at night.

I opened up the colour chart of the scenes in book two and noted the ones where I could change setting or the other characters involved to incorporate a faster introduction to Mark and spending more time with Maggie and Lucas and then I was away. I did spend a moment to mourn Ione’s Uncle Ian, who was a feature of this book at the beginning and has now been consigned to the dustbin. Sorry Uncle Ian, but Maggie and Lucas take precedence.

With those changes done (echoed all the way through the book), I then had a change of my own to do. A scene that I had planned to put into book three wouldn’t fit, so I decided to put it into book two. That ended up being a brilliant thought – with it, the search for the forbidden texts ends on a real cliff-hanger that will, I hope, have people clammering to get their hands on book three.

That will be compounded when they read the very last scene. I’ve gotten rid of the original scene and have put in the opening scene from book three instead. It fits with the changes better, and provides yet another cliff-hanger. Honestly, I think that apart from Ione and Stephen having their Happily-Ever-After *sigh*, readers are going to be gagging for book three.

Now, to polish and then fire it back at my publisher and HOPE LIKE HELL that she loves what I’ve done as much as I do.