Kim is still a couple of chapters ahead of me with her edits. She seemed to think she was starting to get ‘too snarky’ with her latest edits, so I’d better hurry up so I can see how much she’s learned from me, the master of snarks.

Summary: In this chapter Mean, Vornis, Trisk, Darrow, and Tome drive to Hardpan City to find out what Parlay is up to.

After reaching Hardpan, Mean and Dark split off from the group to explore a strange pit dug up on the side of the city. It leads to a tunnel, where the two become trapped. Dring has rigged hex doors at the each end of the passage, that, when triggered, puts the victim into the middle of the tunnel again.

Trisk goes to the Dhaston building, where Vornis sensed Parlay and Tyle. Tyle meets Trisk at the ground floor. He’s guarding the hex door that leads to Jesice. It’s time to finish this! Continue reading →

In this chapter, titled Error, Parlay sends a magical robot through the hex door to Jesice. This nameless machine moves toward the cliff-side city on a secret mission. The police and military attempt to stop it, yet they are powerless against the bizarre technology it commands. Guns can’t stop it. Rocket launchers only make it angrier. And fighter jets have their energy cannons’ blasts redirected at their allies.

Now, this is the kind of stuff I love. Wanton destruction! Chaos from an attacking alien force!

However, Kim has sensed a problem with my explosion-fest:

Either add some kind of stakes so we care about the officers winning against the machine (but it you want to keep the machine’s purpose a surprise, might not work), or add more character to the scene so the reader cares about the characters involved. Doesn’t have to be a lot, just little bits of development to get the reader attached to them. Otherwise, there’s a lot of shooting and explosions, but it doesn’t feel like anything really happened. Or maybe just condense the whole scene to a few pages.

Now, she has a point. None of these cops have a large role in the story beyond this chapter. But I don’t want to shorten the scenes that much, since I DO think it’s important to show how the Jesian forces fail against Parlay’s robot. Because when Hatchel and Tecker come to the rescue later, I need the reader to believe that those two rapscallions are the only hope of stopping it.

Maybe I’ll come up with something as I go through Kim’s margin notes. Continue reading →