Shelter from the Storm - Working Title
May. 30th, 2011 08:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kate_sherwoodI'm trying a historical. Pre-civil war, gold rush fun! We'll see how it goes.
It's letting me write in a different style, which is kind of fun. Instead of reining in my natural impulse to be wordy, I'm letting myself run with it. We'll see how that goes. Anyway, a sneak peak at the introduction. I know, it's pretty exposition-y, but I think I kind of like it...
Virgil Wilson killed the last of his enemies on his seventeenth birthday. Finishing the job left him with a lot of free time, but he soon found ways to fill it.
While he’d been seeking his revenge, he’d lived a strictly disciplined life, but as soon as he’d finished his task, he discovered the joys of drinking, gambling, and whoring. When he needed money, he’d use his gift of violence by working as a hired gun. In the chaotic world of the California Gold Rush, there was always plenty of that sort of work.
Virgil didn’t worry too much about the men he killed. Well, he didn’t worry at all about the first batch. And the later victims had all been bad men, in one way or another. They’d had it coming. That’s what he told himself, although he didn’t put it in exactly those words. When he said it, he said “They had me coming.” He was fully aware that out there, somewhere, there was another man, a man who would someday deliver justice to Virgil, just as Virgil had delivered it to others. Virgil wouldn’t disagree, not for a second, with the idea that he, too, had it coming.
But, while he wasn’t prepared to argue about whether or not he deserved Death, he certainly wasn’t seeking it out. In fact, there had been several times in the last ten years of debauchery when he’d faced Death and stared it down, snarling with the defiance of a natural survivor. Virgil had dragged himself through thirteen miles of snow-covered scrub, with a bullet hole in his thigh, just because he was too damn stubborn to give up. He’d fought his way out of a burning whore house, and fought his way back in when a man offered him ten dollars to rescue a certain girl. Virgil had taken the money, and when he managed to pull out several other girls, as well, he’d taken his reward from them in trade. And there had been other times, too, as the scars on his body made all too clear, other times when his death had been all but certain, except for his stubborn refusal to lie down.
And now he’d gotten himself into another one of those situations, another time when his life was hanging in the balance, and he needed to use all of his will to ensure that the scale tilted in his preferred direction. The cold had been bad enough, but when it had started to snow, that had been when Virgil had realized just how much trouble he was in. It was still only late September, he was pretty sure, way too early for the snow to be coming down this hard, but apparently the weather hadn’t bothered to consult the calendar.
...
And the second chapter is from the other guy's POV. So far, I like the line...
Will wasn’t ready for this. Not for any of it. He’d made it this far on luck and desperation, but the first of those was running out fast, leaving him with far too much of the second.
Like I said -- wordy. But I'm having fun!
It's letting me write in a different style, which is kind of fun. Instead of reining in my natural impulse to be wordy, I'm letting myself run with it. We'll see how that goes. Anyway, a sneak peak at the introduction. I know, it's pretty exposition-y, but I think I kind of like it...
Virgil Wilson killed the last of his enemies on his seventeenth birthday. Finishing the job left him with a lot of free time, but he soon found ways to fill it.
While he’d been seeking his revenge, he’d lived a strictly disciplined life, but as soon as he’d finished his task, he discovered the joys of drinking, gambling, and whoring. When he needed money, he’d use his gift of violence by working as a hired gun. In the chaotic world of the California Gold Rush, there was always plenty of that sort of work.
Virgil didn’t worry too much about the men he killed. Well, he didn’t worry at all about the first batch. And the later victims had all been bad men, in one way or another. They’d had it coming. That’s what he told himself, although he didn’t put it in exactly those words. When he said it, he said “They had me coming.” He was fully aware that out there, somewhere, there was another man, a man who would someday deliver justice to Virgil, just as Virgil had delivered it to others. Virgil wouldn’t disagree, not for a second, with the idea that he, too, had it coming.
But, while he wasn’t prepared to argue about whether or not he deserved Death, he certainly wasn’t seeking it out. In fact, there had been several times in the last ten years of debauchery when he’d faced Death and stared it down, snarling with the defiance of a natural survivor. Virgil had dragged himself through thirteen miles of snow-covered scrub, with a bullet hole in his thigh, just because he was too damn stubborn to give up. He’d fought his way out of a burning whore house, and fought his way back in when a man offered him ten dollars to rescue a certain girl. Virgil had taken the money, and when he managed to pull out several other girls, as well, he’d taken his reward from them in trade. And there had been other times, too, as the scars on his body made all too clear, other times when his death had been all but certain, except for his stubborn refusal to lie down.
And now he’d gotten himself into another one of those situations, another time when his life was hanging in the balance, and he needed to use all of his will to ensure that the scale tilted in his preferred direction. The cold had been bad enough, but when it had started to snow, that had been when Virgil had realized just how much trouble he was in. It was still only late September, he was pretty sure, way too early for the snow to be coming down this hard, but apparently the weather hadn’t bothered to consult the calendar.
...
And the second chapter is from the other guy's POV. So far, I like the line...
Will wasn’t ready for this. Not for any of it. He’d made it this far on luck and desperation, but the first of those was running out fast, leaving him with far too much of the second.
Like I said -- wordy. But I'm having fun!
