Summary Sunday

This is the last Summary Sunday from Courting Cassandry that I will be sharing with you. Why? Because I finished my first draft this week! (Please join me in a roaring "Huzzah!") There will be many revisions ahead before the story is ready to share with you in full, but now I have the "clay" (a first draft) to work and fashion into something polished and hopefully enjoyable for my readers.

So here is a final sampling of sentences from my final chapter of Courting Cassandry. Thank you for joining me on this part of the journey!

Mini-Cast of Characters:

Cassandry: my 40-something heroine
Gerolt: my 50-something hero
Egelina: Cassandry's teenaged daughter
Rauffe: Gerolt's teenaged son

Monday: (Cassandry to Egelina:) “Gelli! How could you and Rauffe perform such a desecration of something you must have recognized as precious to Lord Gerolt?”

Tuesday: Gerolt felt a tug in his chest, as powerful as if a physical cord sought to jerk him from this chamber into the yard below. Did she still linger there? Was it too late?

Wednesday: Gerolt had focused on fate’s unlucky whims for so long. Did he dare hazard all the future that this time it would be kind?

Thursday: Oh, saints, if she misread the intent in his eyes, she was afraid she might splinter into a thousand jagged shards.

Summary Sunday

Here are some sample sentences from my last two chapters of Courting Cassandry. I'm hoping to finish the first draft this week!

Mini-Cast of Characters:

Cassandry: my 40-something heroine

Gerolt: my 50-something hero

Egelina/Gelli: Cassandry's teenaged daughter

Rauffe: Gerolt's teenaged son

Monday: Cassandry could not speak these hard truths to a daughter still so precariously on the edge of faith and fear.

Tuesday: I lost too many years with you, Gelli. Too many years lost to my own confusion and hopelessness and grief.

Wednesday: (Rauffe:) “Cassandry could not possibly have made this. She knows that I dislike peas.”

Thursday: Cassandry stared a long moment at the shell. The sternness slid from her face, but Gerolt could not interpret the expression that replaced it.

Friday: Clearly Gerolt needed to teach his son a little more about chivalry.

Summary Sunday

Good news! I am absolutely, positively in the next to the last chapter of Courting Cassandry now! Just have to tie up the final few loose ends and, well, still figure out exactly how my hero and heroine are going to get their happy-ever-after ending (okay, so that's still looking like a bit of a challenge, but I've made it this far with the plot, I'm sure my characters will figure out how to solve this problem, too--I hope!).

Here are some sentences from my next-to-the-next-to-the-last and next-to-the-last chapters of Courting Cassandry, and a mini-cast of characters to help you along. (Once again, I've concealed the identities of some of the characters so as not to give away the ending.)

Mini-cast of characters:

Gerolt: My 50-something hero
Cassandry: My 40-something heroine
Egelina: Cassandry's teenaged daughter

Monday: (Gerolt's thoughts): Only the myopic young with their still callow charms could fail to see the beauty of a silver strand of hair, the wisdom in a creased brow, the compassion of crinkled eyes.

Tuesday: There was no reaching her before she could do the deed. Gerolt searched with a rising desperation for words to deflect the purpose she looked chillingly reconciled to now.

Wednesday: Gerolt stood alone on the tower. The sun had come out again, bathing his face in its warmth. He glanced behind him. His shadow had never looked so empty.

Thursday: “Stop,” Cassandry murmured against his mouth and tried to push him away. “Gerolt, stop. We cannot do this.”

            “I know,” he said, and kissed her again

Friday: For someone on the verge of obtaining what she “desired most,” Egelina looked very close to bursting into tears.

The Lady and the Minstrel is going on tour!

Blog tour, that is. This banner pretty much says it all.

There will be interviews (including one with my heroine, Marguerite), spotlights, reviews, and TWO GIVEAWAYS!!! To follow along click on the link below.

The Lady and the Minstrel Blog Tour

Summary Sunday

Good news! I'm pretty sure I'm in the next to the last--or possibly, the next to the next to the last--chapter of Courting Cassandry! At any rate, the end is coming into sight. Here are a few new sentences from my writing sessions this week.

I can't give you all the speaker attributions for the sentences below because it might give too much away, but in case you still need it, here's my mini cast of characters for those characters I do mention by name.

Cast of Characters

Cassandry: my forty-something heroine
Gerolt: my fifty-something hero
Egelina: Cassandry's teenaged daughter

Monday: Cassandry rode past the village with its mix of neat and dilapidated cottages, into the smear of greenery soaring skyward on either side of the forest road.

Tuesday: “I would remind you that the Lady Egelina is of age to make her own choice. The monks have no obligation to return her to you against her will.”

Wednesday: “I envied Gerolt his clothes and his jewels and his privilege—but when I came home from the East, I found it was the love of his children that I envied of him the most.”

Thursday: Gerolt sought Cassandry’s gaze, desperate for wisdom greater than his own.

Friday: They stood at stalemate, until Cassandry appeared so suddenly between them that Gerolt wondered if she had conjured herself from one spot to another.

Summary Sunday

I thought I saw the end in sight for this first draft of Courting Cassandry, only to be thwarted by a character this week who decided to throw an unexpected wrench into the works. I argued with her, I tried to ignore her, I struggled to resist, but in the end she defeated me and I wrote the scene the way she demanded. Whether it makes the cut in revisions and stays in the story is yet an open question, but don't tell her that I said that. J

I still think the ending is relatively near. In the meantime, here are some new sentences from my work this week on Courting Cassandry.

Mini-Cast of Characters

Gerolt: my fifty-something hero
Cassandry: my forty-something heroine
Egelina: Cassandry's teenaged daughter
Rauffe: Gerolt's teenaged son

Monday: The wounded wife, the benumbed mother, the broken woman had all burned away in the brightness of Gerolt’s love.

Tuesday: She took the circlet from Egelina, and when her daughter did not answer but sat gazing at her mother with wide, watery eyes, Cassandry took the parchment, too.

Wednesday: Some flicker of awareness had awakened in Rauffe’s eyes and he rolled onto his side, curling up in a ball and groaning out, “It burns. It burns.”

Thursday: "I threw the container away in the moat so that no one could trace it back to me.” (And no, I'm not going to tell you which character says this. J )

Friday: If he ceased to fight the pain, if he succumbed to the refuge of full unconsciousness, Cassandry did not know if she would ever be able to rouse him from it.