Waiting to Decapitate (a character)

A writer’s life is a strange thing. I don’t usually realize it until other people point it out to me.

I’m having tons of fun writing the second Blades of Janus book, immersing myself in the world and lives of these characters I love so dearly. Over the weekend, I was talking to a friend, and gleefully said, “I finally got to write the decapitation scene!!!” They had no idea what I was talking about, but are used to this kind of thing from me by now 🙂

The ensuing conversation was hilarious. My favorite part was when they reminded me that I’d decapitated a character in Pack, the first Blades of Janus book, and I replied, “Oh yeah. But he put his head right back on, so that totally doesn’t count.”

I was so sure everyone around me knows about this scene. I’ve been thinking of writing it for years. In fact, a version of it appeared in the very first iteration of the Blades of Janus—Pack (which was almost completely rewritten before publishing 🙂 ). It’s exciting and emotional and builds individual characters, their relationships, and the readers’ understanding of the world. Plus, it was incredible to write.

Scenes like this live in my mind. They create a similar pressure to the kind I wrote about a couple of years back on this blog. The kind that keeps you writing because you just have to see what happens next.

I’m already seeing scenes, plot lines, character arcs from the books ahead, and I have to tell you, I can’t wait to get to those stories. But for now, I’m taking it one chapter at a time.