Jacey Bedford's Journal

From altariel
When you see this, post a snippet from your works-in-progress.

[OK, I'll play. You do need to know that Boney and Jester are horses.]

I tried to unclench the fist I'd made around Epona's talisman, but I had to peel my fingers back one by one with my right hand. When I did, my left palm threobbed from the heat. In the centre, where I expected to find blisters at the very least, there was a small, white pony-shaped scar, the same shape as the pony on the talisman.

Ryan dismounted and came to Boney's head.  "Are you all right?" he called. “I heard you... chanting. Saw you fall. What just happened?”

Good questions, but I didn't have the answers. I was still shaking inside, so I sat down right there on the bridge before my knees collapsed and ran my right hand through my hair. Jester nuzzled my ear. My left shoulder ached, but I didn't think anything was broken.

“Did you ever see that old Bruce Willis movie about the weird kid?” I asked. “Well you’ve got the equine equivalent. Your horse sees dead people.”

I just finished the rewrite of 'Your Horse Sees Dead People' for Agent Beth. It's grown by 8k words (now 69,000 words) since the first draft, but developed a neat little sub-plot that makes sense of some of the the other stuff.

My huge thanks to charlieallery  for doing a very quick (2 day) read through and comment for me, and my thanks also to brownnicky  who gave great insight int the quirks of the first draft and offered to read it again (but couldn't in January). I will doubtless take you up on that later, Nicky, because I'm sure Beth will have some nitpicks. Also thanks to all the writers from Milford and Minimilford - some on lj, some not, and including mevennen, klwilliams, lizcounihan , purplecthulhu  and la_marquise_de_  - who critted the beginning and synopsis (some of them twice) and bluehairsue who was on lj but is now on the end of an email address somewhere behaind a snowdrift in Ellerby.

I hope I haven't missed anyone out.

Thanks, guys.

I've just finished a fairly major rewrite on 'Your Horse Sees Dead People.' Just going through it for obvious slips and changing where the chapters begin and end to even things up a bit, and then I'll be sending it off to the lovely Agent Beth.

brownnicky 's notes were invaluable. Thanks very much. charlieallery  are you still up for giving it a quick read? You kindly offered earlier, but by that time I was in the middle of alterations.

Plotting the rewrite of 'Your Horse Sees Dead People' as requested by my agent.

I need to stay very focused on the main plot points. I have a tendency to cram all sorts of other stuff in there, too.

Whoo-hoo. Today I actually wrote 'The End' under the first draft of my horses and magic novel for middle grade readers, 'Your Horse Sees Dead People'. I anticipated the finished length to be 50 - 60,000 words when I launched the project and it came in at 61k

Since I tend to write long and reduce on the second pass I'm not too worried about the length. in fact I think the build up to the ending may be a little too long and it'll need a bit of firm but gentle pruning when I've gained a bit of distance from it.

I'm just going to spell-check it quickly. Tomorrow it gets sent to Agent B who has requested I send it as soon as possible, but in the mean time I'll be sending it to those who offered to do a quick read for me. Thank you. You know who you are.
:-)

I'm working on the first draft of 'Your Horse Sees Dead People'. Currently 45k words and should be finished in another 5k - 7k words. I'm just setting everything up to write the climax. This is the magic-and-horses book for middle-grade readers. (It may actually be borderline YA, ut I'm not worrying about that until Agent Beth has read it.) I had lots of ideas, but I'm not going to be able to get them into a book of this length so I'm thinking that there may be some mileage for other books in a series. This book features Epona. i'm thinking the next one will have a water kelpie villain and then maybe in the third, Pegasus.