The Reason for the Season

I suppose it’s been a while since I wrote a real entry… something that wasn’t a survey, a story, or an angry rant. So here we go.

I was extremely behind on NaNoWriMo by the time my parents left, not having put in a full day’s word count since they arrived, but with some serious work and only one late night, I managed to get caught up in just a few days. That’s really an accomplishment since each day that goes by adds another 1667 words to goal. Now I’m actually a day ahead. Yesterday I even went through all the named characters to make sure their names were kosher, so to speak. Remember, Christianity has not been a major influence in this world until very recently. The cultures that dominated for the longest amount of time were Greece and Rome, with a smattering of local cultures as you might find throughout Europe. So names based on Hebrew just don’t work. I had to change Sean (the Irish version of John) to Seldon. Maria became Laetitia (good Latin name); Martha became Matilda; Jackson became Jedrek; and Matthias became Maurice. The only one I didn’t have to change was Sara because the entire point is that her father chose her name and Arabic and Hebrew borrow heavily from each other. It was a bit of a chore trying to remember all the names I’d used at random whenever a new character came into a scene and had to be introduced.

I have reached a bit of a sticking point with my plot though. When Alina and Sara first came to Onsen Springs, they stayed at an inn until they could find a house. Well, the innkeepers have a nephew, Neal, who is Alina’s age and falls in love with her. At first she dismisses him as a boy with a crush, because in terms of experiences in life, she’s much older than him. But he’s persistent and now she’s gone and fallen in love with him. It’s great because he’s been her friend for years and Sara adores him. He’s handsome and devoted and fun, which is something Alina doesn’t have a lot of in her life. I’m glad she fell in love with him. Only now I don’t know what to do with Nicholas, her former suitor turned Christian missionary. I had planned out this lovely plague and what should have happened was that the missionaries would claim the plague was sent by their god to cleanse the town of sin. Not everyone would believe it of course, but enough hotheads would follow them that there would plenty of trouble. Nicholas would have heard of Alina because she’s got a good reputation as a healer, so he goes to her when his fellow missionary falls ill and recognizes her from Venice. Eventually, Alina would fall ill and she would have to rely on Nicholas to cure her working from her books and whispered instructions. They would fall in love and he would give up his missionary life.

Only now that makes no sense. Alina’s already in love and Neal is way better for her than Nicholas. Even if I kill Neal off, she won’t just transfer her affections in a leap. And Nicholas is passionate, probably a little too serious for Alina. I want her with Neal, but I can’t just leave Nicholas out in the cold. Maybe I can make him a good Christian. He can get sick because he is busy helping tend the sick and offering them true spiritual comfort instead of visions of hellfire and damnation. Then he’ll admit to Alina that he was the one who asked Savonarola to arrest her and Ben in the hopes that she would give him up and turn to Nicholas instead. He’s truly penitent and dies with her forgiveness. It could work, anyway. Obviously, there’s enough story left to take me to 50K easily. I could even go well past it, which means I have a lot of writing to do over the next week.

As for holiday plans, so far they are somewhat fluid. Alan’s captain and his wife are having a sort of Thanksgiving potluck for the unit, so we’ll probably spend some time there. Alan has yet to tell me what we should bring, so I may be doing last minute shopping tonight or I may be lucky enough to have all the ingredients right here. Alan is trying to guilt his mom into coming out to Colorado next year since he’s supposed to be deploying in March of 2012, as of right now. We’ll see if she actually does it. Her argument for going to Florida every year is that they don’t know how long they have left with their parents. What she means is really Kurt’s dad, whose health is very poor. I wouldn’t be surprised if her parents had another 20 years of perfect health, especially Kerry, who isn’t much older than my parents.

Alan is feeling much keener on Christmas than he ever has, since he’s no longer working in retail and doesn’t have it shoved down his throat from mid-October on. I don’t really want anything for Christmas this year. I’m not even sure I want to exchange gifts at all. I just want to get a tree and make it all pretty. I’m thinking of replacing the cat’s tower, too, since it’s pretty threadbare in spots. Plus it would be nice to just have a quiet holiday without all the consumption and consumerism, especially since we plan to have kids soon, when it becomes much harder to avoid all that. I just want to bask in the glow of Yuletide cheer and celebrate the triumph of the light over the darkness. I probably wouldn’t say no to a book or two though.

Anyway, time to fold clothes, shower, and continue along Alina’s path. It’s been a long November. I’m even dreaming about them now!

~Liz