#WeWriWa // #8sunday 06 – January 19, 2020

Welcome to Weekend Writing Warriors, where writers share 8-10 sentences from their WIP for from a current writing project, published or unpublished, then visit other participants and offer opinions, critiques, support. I just realised that my last 4 WWW posts have all had a “03” at the start because I forgot I was numbering them. Back on track now. 😂

This week, I’ve continued working on a submission for Cantina Publishing’s Silk & Steel: An Adventure Anthology of Queer Ladies. I’ve completely changed tack on this story this week. Where the dragon-egg-stealing was a sport before, I’ve now changed it to a government initiative and this is working better for me. Basically the government take the eggs and destroy them because they’re trying to destroy the dragon breed.

The characters are still much the same, though Tori and Helena’s relationship is on the low-down since there is a department policy of no dating amongst employees. And the rivalry between them and Ada and Jules is much more in Tori’s head than it was in the sport version, as you can see below. Helena’s just told her to stop acting like it’s a competition and Tori’s got defensive.

The thing was, it was a competition to her. Even if there was no official count kept by the department, she would always compare the number of dragon eggs she and Helena collected to the number Jules and his sister Ada had in any given week, month, or year. It wouldn’t matter to her so much if the Havishams weren’t so bloody smug about it all the time. It was the department’s worst-kept seceret that they had been given their positions in the department because their father was a high-ranking politician, but no one could complain because they were actually good at their jobs regardless of how they came by them.

Or at least, they had been, and the habit of secretly competing with them was hard for Tori to break. Now, they were barely seen around the compound and when they were, they kept their heads down. Tori might not have liked the siblings themselves, but she had to admit she’d enjoyed hers and Jules’ verbal sparring. She almost missed it now.

Ooh, mysterious behaviour, I wonder what that’s’ all about… If I ever actually finish this story, perhaps you’ll find out!

See you all next week!