#WIPpet Wednesday – March 14, 2018

Hello and welcome to WIPpet Wednesday, a blog hop wherein writers share an excerpt from their current WIP that somehow relates to the date.  To join in, simply click the blue linky up there to the right.

I should have posted here last week, but I was involved in a concert from last Thursday to Saturday and Wednesday was our dress rehearsal, so blogging fell by the wayside. This weekend just past was a three-day one, which meant I had time to type up all the handwritten stuff I’d accumulated over the past couple of weeks. It added about 3000 words to my count! I was quite pleased. I think I’m getting better at dsecribing my world and putting in more details. Yay!

I started an audio book last night called The Last Days of Night by Graham Moore, which centres on the legal battles between Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse and has a lot about the early days of electrical power. It got me thinking about the fact that my characters in Memories and Magic are living in a time and place where similar discoveries are being made, and I started asking myself who the Edisons/Westinghouses/Teslas of my world are. I also realised that just because it all fills Clara with wonder, that doesn’t mean it fills everyone with wonder. I came home from my walk and made two pages of notes on what I should research about Edison and such to fill in gaps in my own world-building, and also some notes about extra scenes I can include. I also need  to go off and research neon signage and figure out if I can include that as well.

But onto the WIPpet. My WIPpet math is simple this week: three paragraphs for the third month. Clara and  Mathias are at a carnival after the day’s Liberation Day parade and other celebrations (the day that the Racharans finally freed themselves from the rule of the Magicians). This is one of the main attractions:

Clara had never seen anything like it. At its centre was a column of rotating brass and copper cogs, all intersecting easily with one another as they moved. As she watched, Clara realised these weren’t even there for practical purposes; the carousel’s actual workings were hidden behind the outer layer of clockwork. The horses were painted in blacks, browns and creams, with gold and silver saddles and bridles. The children watching the horses move up and down were as wide-eyed as the children riding them and the adults holding smaller children in the saddles all grinned broadly at one another. Above the horses, glowing lamps flashed on and off at regular intervals and barrel organ music piped out the top.

“I could watch it all night,” Clara breathed.

Mathias grabbed her hand. “More fun to ride it,” he said. “Come on!” He dragged her towards the line.

Speaking of which, it’s about time I had another ride on the carousel in the city here. It’s been a while.

How are you guys doing? I feel like I haven’t spoken to you all in ages!

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