NaNoWriMo Update #3 - The Pale Horse
Just wrapped up Chapter 9 and hit the 38,000 word mark, putting me about 75% of my way to NaNoWriMo’s 50,000 word goal (but only about 25% of the way to what I imagine will wind up being a 120,000 word novel). I don’t mind books getting longer as a series goes on, but I’m hoping I don’t turn around and do a GRRM and make my later books double or triple the length of my earlier works.
I’ve been writing each morning (well on the weekend I admittedly wrote mostly in the afternoon or evening) and while I haven’t gotten the 1,667 words each and every day, I’ve certainly averaged more than that when looking at my output overall. After going months without doing any real writing (I think it was the spring when I finished up my first draft of The Ghost, The Serpent, and the Wasteland) it’s been good to get back into a regular habit. That being said, I look forward to sleeping in again when I finish the rough draft.
What I wanted to really write about today was music and writing. I have two ways of incorporating music into my routine. I have a playlist on Spotify that have inspired certain scenes (I thought of Locke’s last stand in Paradiso while listening to Queen’s “The Show Must Go On,” for example) or fit characters really well (Lord Huron’s “Brother” does an amazing job of expressing the relationship between John and Daniel). However, I rarely listen to music with English-language lyrics when I’m writing as it’s often too distracting. Brainstorming? Absolutely. But when it’s time to write things down I go with foreign language music or music without any lyrics.
My go to albums when I’m writing are the Red Dead Redemption Original Soundtrack, The Music of Red Dead Redemption 2, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly OST, and Finch (fun fact, I actually wrote the last third of The Minutemen while listening to this album on repeat. It’s a soundtrack to Jeff VanderMeer’s Finch: A Novel and was written by Murder by Death, one of my favorite bands of all time. The first three are pretty obvious inspirations as I consider The World Hereafter series to be as much as Western series as it is a post-apocalyptic science fiction series.
Surprisingly, it wasn’t until recently that I even considered listening to one of the best soundtracks of all time: The Mad Mad: Fury Road OST by Junkie XL. I’m ashamed of myself, since Fury Road is one of my favorite movies of all time (if not my favorite movie period). While Locke’s appearance is inspired primarily by John Marston and Red Harlow from the Red Dead series, he definitely has some Max Rockatansky vibes.
With Pale Horse I’m leaning a little more toward my fantasy roots (my first stories were classic elves vs. orcs tales) I’ve expanded my selection of writing music to includes bands like The HU and SKÁLD, both of which have a very wild, fantastical element to them that does an excellent job of getting me into the headspace to write about Locke’s journey north. While I tend to cycle through the same artists and albums on repeat, I did let Spotify pick something for me last week and ran into an awesome album: Ofnir, an album by Heilung, a German band that writes a lot of songs about Norse and Germanic mythology.
As I have with the last two posts I want to leave you with a little excerpt. Minor spoilers for The Long Road and The Minutemen ahead.
Two Sun and his scouts were dispatched, their numbers swollen by recruits selected by Vodica and Backus. A lone rider returned at noon to give the all-clear signal and the Marked Ones lurched forward, resuming their long trek north. They marched back to old Highway 93, following it until it transformed into 893. The days passed by uneventfully, turning into a week and then nearly two when Locke and Two Sun rode up to the outer edge of Outpost 173 one morning.
It was a small settlement with perhaps a score and a half of buildings surrounding the eponymous outpost. The structure looked every inch the Old West Army fort with a sturdy wooden wall reinforced by sheets of metal while the buildings around it were a mixture of brick, wood, and recycled materials.
An arched sign spanned the northbound road reading “Welcome to Outpost 173 – Vanguard Town of San Californio.” A pair of soldiers dressed in tan field jackets, khaki breeches and an armored breastplate with a painting of a serpentine dragon and Chinese characters that Locke recognized as the symbols for “Liberty, Unity, Prosperity,” the national motto of San Californio. They both carried what looked like a variation of the AR-15 with wooden furniture.
“What business do a pair of tribals have in Outpost 173?” one of the soldiers asked, her tone not exactly unfriendly, but not particularly welcoming.
“Just passing through, ma’am,” Locke replied. “We’ve been hunting prongers for days, but they’ve been driven away from our lands.”
“Which tribe?” the other soldier asked, his tone a little more suspicious.
“Yava,” Two Sun said.
Locke, impressed by his companion’s quick response, nodded.
“Never heard of the Yava,” the woman said, turning to her companion. “You?”
The man shook his head.
“Alright, stay out of trouble,” the woman continued, waving them past.
The pair barely made it more than a few hundred yards before Two Sun pointed out a warning poster nailed to the side of a building. It warned of a tribe called the “Marked Ones” led by a warrior called “Phoenix of Mesa” and offered a bounty of fifty Ah Toy dollars for any members of the tribe brought to an Ah Toy settlement, dead or alive. A description of their decorated arms and crude depictions of several tattoos that Locke wore on his own arm filled the bottom half of the poster.
Locke cursed but was grateful he had kept his sleeves down as he rode into town and that Two Sun only had a handful of tattoos on his own arm – none of which matched the images on the poster. They wouldn’t be able to resupply here.
