I hit 50,000 words on the novel a couple days ago. Looking at it in print here, it doesn’t seem like a lot…but that’s half a novel right there. A big, ol’ steaming pile of novel-to-be.

I’m fairly excited. As it turns out, I’m about halfway through the plot, too. Funny how things turn out so…neat. 🙂

Here’s an excerpt:

There were more people moving around in the dimness, muttering, murmuring. Their voices rose and fell with the volume of Lisk’s keening. Randall recognized them, though they stared at him blankly. Obadiah. Santo. Martha. All of them lost in their own worlds, staring and whispering at things Randall couldn’t see. He was going to leave them here. Abandon them. Betray—

No. He couldn’t betray them—they weren’t his people to betray. He’d done enough, more than he’d ever needed to. The runes in his pocket pulsed and thrummed. Home, home, home, they whispered, and it felt like hope, hope, hope to Randall.

“The runes go deep, miles deep, centuries deep, ages deep,” Hortator said. “I can’t see them all, my eyes are too big, I’m flummoxed, oh, why Pinky Creed? You ain’t no traitor like that boy said, I know you ain’t, and why’d you leave me with the Bloody Man? Why?”

But he didn’t resist when Randall opened the truck door and pushed him inside. He just moaned, and whined for Pinky Creed, and held his shoulders with his big hands. Randall moved around to the other side. Someone tall and lanky broke out of the night and moved to stand in front of him. Lean Bean Aurelius met Randall’s eyes. There was a pistol in his hands, pointed down at the earth.

His voice was soft. “Save my boy.”

Randall watched Lean Bean’s fingers flick over the grip of the pistol. He had a thousand thousand children to save in Nanston. A million little boys losing blood to the Boneyard King, and he was supposed to stop for just one child? Just one little boy who’d saved his own life, tore his wife away from him, been merciful and cruel at once?

“Save the boy, save the boy, boy, toy, joy, decoy.” Hortator laughed inside the truck. “Pretty wings, pretty lying things.”

Randall said, “I can’t do anything for him.”

Lean Bean said, “You’d better try.” Flick, flick, his fingers on the pistol’s grip.

The runes in the book weren’t protecting him any longer. But he still had Pinky Creed’s knife. His knife, his bulk, against Lean Bean and his pistol? Lisk’s voice hung in the air, something torn, something wild…