Red in Tooth and Claw

I've been deep in the edits for my next YA, Red in Tooth and Claw which are due in...nine days. *winces*

I'm trying really hard not to think about it. It's a tight turn around deadline-wise, and we're not doing anything major. At this stage of editing, we're cutting away the stuff that's slowing down the narrative, adding in details, and in general bringing the story into focus. I thought it might be fun for you to see what that looks like. How similar, and yet how different, these passages can be with only small changes.

My editor and I both agreed that the current opening was too slow, so we've been working hard on that. I'm going to post the old opening first, then the new one. I think the new one is better, but it can be difficult for me to tell at this stage. I've been looking at it too long, you know? I have to trust that my editor knows what they're doing and would tell me if it was terrible. (He does and if he did, he would tell me in a kind way.)

So here's the old opening:

My battered pocket watch was as dead as the body in the coffin, but that didn’t stop me from keeping it in a white-knuckled grip. After all, it was the only thing I could hold on to. I couldn’t hold on to Pops. All I could do was eye him in the coffin and tell him how sorry I was about this wretched farce of a funeral. Pops hated funerals.

But he loved a good wake.

Funerals were for wailing. Wakes were for celebrating and toasting a life lived where you savored every bite. My people loved a good wake. Pops said that the old gods, they were much more understanding about these sorts of things. New Retienne liked the new god and the new god liked proper funerals.

I’d never set foot into New Retienne’s ramshackle church until today. Pops and I only came into town every three weeks for supplies—four if we could stretch it. So far I wasn’t impressed. I’d been raised better than to spit on someone’s floor, but let me tell you, it was a close thing. This was a floor made to be spit on.

I wanted to spit on the mayor most of all. He had me boxed in at the front of the church, the hard bench behind me. I didn’t need him or his pack of minions and there were plenty of empty benches they could have taken. Only a handful of people attended the service, and I think most of them were there for the vittles the mayor had promised after the ceremony. Irritating, but I couldn’t blame folks for wanting to fill their bellies when someone else was footing the bill.

I recognized everyone there, except for one lady at the back. She was dressed plainly, but that only seemed to frame her beauty more strongly. She kept sending me sympathetic smiles. I kept ignoring them.

The mayor patted my shoulder, leaning into whisper in a way that didn’t disrupt the flow of words coming from the preacher. “He’s in a better place.”

I disagreed but bit my tongue.

Pops had always told me there was a sure-fire way to tell if a bureaucrat was lying to you. If their lips were moving, get your shovel ready. Nobody could unload verbal pucky like a bureaucrat. The mayor kept a hand on my shoulder, his two lawyer buddies flanking us. They were there to ‘support me in my time of need’, and every time they opened their mouths, I reckoned I should go get myself a shovel. I was going to be knee-deep in their pucky before long.

Pops had been a simple man. Didn’t mean he was wrong.

And now he was dead.

They were all dead.

I didn’t remember my parents much, and what I did remember, I didn’t mourn. That might be on me. Some people had a knack for mourning and despite all my practice, I didn’t appear to be one of them. I did miss my grandmother, what little I remember. She’d hummed while she baked and liked a bushel of wildflowers on the table when we could manage them. They’d smelled good, reminding you of warm summer days in tall grass. She sang poorly, but often and with joy, even though she sounded like a strangled bird when she did. She beat everyone at dominoes, couldn’t shoot a pistol for squat, but could nail a grouse forty yards away with her eyes shut using her crossbow.

Her wake had lasted two days, and we’d danced until our feet were sore, our fingers cramped from fiddling, and our hearts were lightened in our grief.

This church didn’t smell of flowers at all and there was no lightening of anything, only the additional weight of each tick of the mayor’s watch, making me feel like I was filling up with sand. I wanted to bolt from it like a rabbit legging it to the safety of the underbrush.

But I couldn’t.

Because Pops had gone to his maker, and I was left here in a suit too big for my frame. It itched something fierce. The wooden planks under my feet creaked as I fidgeted, and all the incense was making me lightheaded. The lawyer to each side of us were stone faced, the mayor patting dry eyes at my side.

A tidy trap, if ever I saw one.

The preacher seemed like a decent fella, but that didn’t make me want to burn down the church any less as the service dragged on, long and windy. My grandfather would have hated it. Pops didn’t put much stock in the teachings of this church, and I can’t say I’ve strayed far from his thinking on the subject. Life seemed complicated enough without adding too much churching on top of things.

I could almost hear the deep singsong of his voice. “I miss the old gods, Faolan. They were distant, like mountains. Give them a bit of music and dance on feast days and they left well enough alone. They didn’t need us nattering their ears off, and we didn’t need them up in our daily business.”

Today there had been an abundance of nattering—the holy man sure had a lot to say about a fella he’d barely met. When he wasn’t flapping his gums, there was music, and I use the word generously. It was awful, the small piano out of tune. I would have liked to play some fiddle for Pops. One of his favorite songs, like when we’d sit beside the fire in the cold months offering up a bit of song to the gods of the lands he was from. The gods that weren’t welcome here. I wasn’t sure they could hear a single note, but he’d loved to hear me play, and that was what mattered.

But I’d had to sell my fiddle to pay for the doctor.

Pops would have hated that most of all.

Between me and the priest, lay Pop’s coffin. They’d left it uncovered. It was a shock, seeing his still frame in a wooden box. Death gave his face a softness it hadn’t had in life. Made him look a stranger, which in some ways was a relief.

If it was a stranger in that box, then my grandfather hadn’t abandoned me to this world, leaving me with no one to call my own. I gripped his battered pocket watch in my palm the entire ceremony, just to remind myself of the truth.

He was gone and I was alone.

Once the ceremony was over, the box was nailed shut. I helped a few of the local lads, spit and polished in their finery much as I was, haul the box over to a waiting wagon. I rode in the back with it, along with my fellow pallbearers. It was customary to pay them, and the mayor assured me he would handle it. As I watched him follow us in his fine buggy, pulled by two shining bay horses, I wondered where that money was really coming from.

You didn’t get that nice of a conveyance by giving your money away.

My grandfather would be put to earth in the burial grounds of the new church. My grandmother had been buried on our land—I’d wanted the same for Pops, but no one had listened. I had no money and until my grandfather’s lands were settled on me, my words only had the force of my own breath. The mayor and his people spoke a different tongue, of power and wealth, and I wasn’t fluent. I decided to choose my battles until I mastered their way of speaking. My grandfather wouldn’t give two beans where we laid his carcass, anyhow. The important part had moved on and would seek out my grandmother in the worlds beyond this one.

After the cart ground to a halt, we clambered out and the priest said more words over the hole already prepared, but I hardly listened. As soon as he finished droning on, I grabbed a shovel. The ground was cold, but no longer frozen, winter almost giving way to spring. Still, I broke a sweat, tossing the upturned earth next to the grave onto the coffin. It thudded against the wood, and I said a silent goodbye to the best man I’d known.

And here's the new one:

My battered pocket watch was as dead as the body in the coffin, but that didn’t stop me from keeping it in a white-knuckled grip. After all, it was the only thing I could hold on to. I couldn’t hold on to Pops. All I could do was eye his coffin and tell him how sorry I was about the wretched farce of a funeral we’d just left. Pops hated funerals.

But he loved a good wake.

Funerals were for wailing. Wakes were for celebrating and toasting a life where you’d savored every bite. My people loved a good wake. Pops said that the old gods, they were much more understanding about these sorts of things. New Retienne liked the new god and the new god liked proper funerals.

I’d never set foot onto New Retienne’s graveyard until today. Pops and I only came into town every three weeks for supplies—four if we could stretch it. The ramshackle church behind us blocked the wind, which still had winter’s bite to it. Far as I could tell, that was all it was good for, and I didn’t need it.

“You ready, Mr. Kelly?” The preacher asked, not unkindly, but also like maybe he wanted out of the cold and back to his warm fire.

No. I was not ready. “Yes, sir.”

He nodded, taking out his book. Pops didn’t belong to the Shrouded God, like this preacher did, but it wasn’t worth the fuss. I ignored the preacher’s warbly voice, my mind whited out with grief, as I stared out over the rustling treetops.

Strange that I couldn’t feel the bitter wind, but then I had my own windbreak—Eustace Clarke, the honorable mayor of New Retinene, his second in command, a lawyer named Finchly, and the sheriff, John Bascom. New Retienne might have been a small town, but it had a circulating library sandwiched between Ms. Lillibet’s brothel and the Crooked Donkey, our sorry excuse for a saloon. We likely wouldn’t have had a library at all if Ms. Lillibet herself hadn’t been fond of books. The circulating library had a Natural history book on display, the illustrator indifferent at best. I’d never seen a walrus, only the depicted in that book, but if I’d added a waxed mustache and an overly embroidered waist coat onto that creature, it would have been the spittin’ image of our Mr. Clarke.

The mayor rested a heavy hand on my shoulder, leaning in to whisper so as not to interrupt the preacher. “He’s in a better place.”

I disagreed but bit my tongue.

Finchly hummed an agreement.  He was a handsome older man, I suppose, but had big, blocky teeth I didn’t like the look of. Sheriff Bascom shifted to my right, smelling of cologne with a hint of old bacon fat. Not quite rancid, but flirtin’ with the idea. All three of them loomed like scarecrows around me.

A few other townsfolk stood at the graveside along with the preacher. I recognized each of them, except for a lady standing aways back from the group, sniffing as she brought up a lacy handkerchief to dab at her eyes. She was dressed plainly, but that only seemed to frame her beauty more strongly. She kept sending me sympathetic smiles. I kept ignoring them.

The preacher smiled at Mr. Clarke, his glasses slipping down his nose. “The shrouded god takes, but he also gives. Your loved one is gone—”

“But the community comes together to support you in your time of need,” Mr. Clarke said, stealing the words from the preacher’s mouth.

I could almost hear Pop’s snort. “Nobody can unload verbal pucky like a bureaucrat. Best get your shovel ready, Sprout.”

Pops had been a simple man. Didn’t mean he was wrong.

And now he was dead.

They were all dead.

I didn’t remember my parents much, and what I did remember, I didn’t mourn. That might be on me. Some people had a knack for mourning, and despite all my practice, I didn’t appear to be one of them. I did miss my grandmother. She’d hummed while she baked and said a bushel of wildflowers on the table reminded her of warm summer days in tall grass. She beat everyone at dominoes, couldn’t shoot a pistol for squat, but could nail a grouse forty yards away with her eyes shut using her crossbow.

Every word from the preacher made me feel like I was filling up with sand. I wanted to bolt from the graveside like a rabbit legging it to the safety of the underbrush.

But I couldn’t.

Because Pops had gone to his maker, and I was left here in a suit too big for my frame. It itched something fierce. I was sweating, despite the cold, and it made me shiver. Finchly and Bascom flanked us, stone-faced, the mayor patting dry eyes at my side.

A tidy trap if ever I saw one.

The preacher seemed like a decent fella, but for how little he knew my Pops, he sure found a lot to say. Pops thought life was complicated enough without adding churching on top of things, and I can’t say I’ve strayed far from his thinking on the subject.

I could almost hear the deep singsong of his voice. “I miss the old gods, Faolan. They were distant, like mountains. Give them a bit of music and dance on feast days, and they left you well enough alone. They didn’t need us nattering their ears off, and we didn’t need them up in our daily business.”

Today there had been an abundance of nattering. When he hadn’t beeen flapping his gums, there was music, and I use the word generously. The only good thing about it was the out of tune piano almost drowned out the singing. Almost.

I would have liked to play some fiddle for Pops. One of his favorite songs, like when we’d sit beside the fire in the cold months offering up a bit of song to the gods of the lands he was from. The gods that weren’t welcome here. I wasn’t sure they could hear a single note, but he’d loved to hear me play, and that was what mattered.

But I’d had to sell my fiddle to pay for the doctor.

Pops would have hated that most of all.

It had been a shock this morning, seeing his still frame in a wooden box. Death gave his face a softness it hadn’t had in life. Made him look a stranger.

I gripped his battered pocket watch in my palm—now mine—the entire ceremony, just to remind myself of the truth.

He was gone, and I was alone.

I hadn’t wanted my grandfather put to earth in the burial grounds of the new church. My grandmother had been buried on our land—I’d wanted the same for Pops, but no one had listened. I had no money and until my grandfather’s lands were settled on me, my words only had the force of my own breath. The mayor and his people spoke a different tongue, of power and wealth, and I wasn’t fluent. I decided to choose my battles until I mastered their way of speaking. My grandfather wouldn’t give two beans where we laid his carcass, anyhow.

“May he find solace in the arms of the Shrouded God,” the preacher intoned. There was a rustling as a few men came forward, the service finally done.

I grabbed a shovel. The ground was cold, but no longer frozen, winter almost giving way to spring. Still, I broke a sweat, tossing the upturned earth next to the grave onto the coffin. It thudded against the wood, and I said a silent goodbye to the best man I’d known.

That's it for now. I can't wait for you to meet Faolan!

--Lish