Editing your own work - Deadlier Beginnings Full Edit 2

Guess who got carried away? After the wonderful engagement from members of the Story-mentor group, I set to work editing the first in the Wolf series I'm re-releasing.

I didn't get very far with editing. Instead, I wrote more.

Here's where I am with it. Sorry to drop this on you all again, and if you've not already had a look (and given your opinions) please do. The first 'episode' is Here

Book cover Gingernut Books Ltd

Images from Google free to use search unless otherwise stated

Deadlier than the male

Deadlier Beginnings

The hunched form put down the pen and leaned back in his chair, placing both hands on either side of the book before him. He stretched his neck and shoulders, tipping his head back as far as he could manage, given the ungainly hump on his left shoulder. He sighed, blew gently on the ink he’d put onto the front page of the book, and took a new candle from a drawer in his desk. Lighting it from the guttering stub of the one he worked by, he placed the bottom of the new candle over the dead wick of the first and read the writing again.

In your seventeenth summer, you came into our fold. I recorded the events of your Wolfing as I saw them, aeons before you were born. Your role amongst us was never seen clearly and others of our number argued that your birthing would bring destruction to us all. Some think that your survival may yet prove disastrous, for prophesy can only be interpreted, and therefore can be easily misread. Prophecy is not an exact science.

Though some have argued for your execution, you have proven yourself, times many, to be loyal and true. Yet for all this, you may still be the cause of our downfall and eradication. Take great care that you keep to what is true - for yourself and for Wolfkind, and especially for our Lycaeons - past, present and future.

I give you this - your story - as a record for you to look back upon.

It is said, if we do not learn from our history, we are doomed to repeat it. The knowledge and information on these pages are the tools you need to evade and prevent Wolfkind’s doom.

I believe that some of the memories in it will be lost to you, but here they are, recorded as they happened, without bias or guile. You may do with it as you will, preserve, destroy, or hide it away.

I have never made a duplicate for any other Wolf, neither Lycaeon nor Ancient One. Perhaps it is fitting that the first should be made for you, the first to attain position of Sentinel Exemplar.

Learn from it, prosper and grow, but stay forever true – for Wolfkind’s sake, if not your own.

The Scribe

The wizened form looked up from his work. He heard a light knock and the door to his room opened. An oil lamp preceded the visitor.

“You asked for me to visit you, sir?” a quiet and polite voice spoke and he beckoned her forward with a wave of his hand.

He smiled. “Yes, come in, close the door. I have a gift for you, Sentinel Exemplar,” he said. “Before I give the gift, I must tell you things that I cannot write in your book, for it is not your story, but that of someone else.”

“My book?” she said, looking from The Scribe to the open tome on the desk.

The Scribe took the lamp from her and extinguished the flame. He set the lamp on the floor beside her, took her hands in his and studied them for a moment. “Such smooth, youthful skin. I have often marvelled at how Wolfkind retains their youth. Sometimes I wonder at the justice in it all, but this is my lot, and I accept and embrace it for what it is – a life sentence filled with wondrous things that I alone am witness to,” he said. His voice sounded ancient and unused. Like rusty hinges on a door that has stood closed for centuries and is then pushed open. The creak of old, rusted metal grinding against metal almost painful to hear.

“I brought you something,” she said. She pulled one hand from his grip and took a small bottle from her pocket.

He took it from her and peered at the writing on the label. “Sloe gin?” he said and a smile spread across his ancient face.

She nodded. “I made it myself, a few years ago. I used Anton’s recipe. I guessed you’d like a little lubrication for your throat.”

He laughed and let go of her other hand. From the desk drawer, he took two delicate glasses and poured a drop of the gin into each.

“To the Lycaeon,” he said in a toast, raising his glass.

“The Lycaeon, long may she reign,” she said, clinking his intricate crystal glass with hers.

“It goes without saying, the information I offer to you here, in this room is for you alone to hear,” he said. His voice sounded better for the lubrication and she settled down in the armchair to listen to his words.

Before long, the words enveloped her and she no longer felt like she was being told, she became immersed into a time long-since passed, taken to a place she had never been.

“This is neither your story, nor Luke’s. It is a collective of a few and will not be written in any one record. I tell it to you now, because you will need to call upon the knowledge at some point. Until then, you may forget what I tell you, but when the time is right, it will come back to you. Listen and retain the information,” he said.

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As before, critique and even editing is welcome. You will not hurt my feelings and it will be good practice for you in future if you review work.