I've got a handful of stories that are on the table right now:
- belated Yuletide gifts (1 or 2 will do, she's not picky)
- the collaboration (she's patient, which is good because I'm deep in revision/formatting wonderland)
- Splintered Gates (which is my learning how to write on a tablet book)
- Collateral Damage (the follow-up to Dowse and Bleed)
I've had an 4100+ word opening to Collateral Damage from before that phrase appeared in Dowse and Bleed, but I didn't know which direction to turn after that because it starts out from the perspective of Andre and Shift instead of a direct head-on with Rachelle. Which meant I hadn't the foggiest idea whose story it was and why. I only knew what was going on: the crisis.
Today, I went for the dubious option of just pick one. Here's the snippet:
Breathe. This was not supposed to happen now, not so soon, and not like this.
It was an effort to breathe, to shift gears from the world as Rachelle had always known it. Cycling was survival. She had to move the flood of genetic entries through her vascular system and into archive as soon as possible, or the backup would overwhelm her veins, which could only handle so much. But this day had been coming a long time, and it hit her hard when she incorporated one more entry into her own permanent genetic makeup and then felt that harsh inability to breathe that it was the archive out of space.
Don't cycle. Don't cycle. Back up, spin the paddles, find a shield and stop her own genetic flow. How can you deny your very bones?