Dueling Fantasies .....

So, if your husband throws down the gauntlet, what is there to do but challenge him to a duel.

James writes: "Well, Erin is going to kill me for mentioning this. As my latest project, The Night Girl clawed its way past the halfway mark in its three-year-long writing process, she made noises about not overtaking her own latest project with a three-year-long writing process, a Slavic-flavoured fantasy featuring magic, shadows and talking cats entitled Plain Kate. Earlier today, The Night Girl shot from 36000 words to 37250, passing her own work which is holding pace at 36600 words."

Well, after a bit of work this weekend Plain Kate is up to 38,397 words, of which these are the best 100 or so written today.

"Hmpf," sniffed Taggle, at his back.

"He's just frightened," said Kate.

"Yes. The sort of frightened that puts kittens in sacks."

They went on, with Kate swinging the lantern on the pole, inches from Cream's squelching feet. The forest grew more thin and the fog more thick, until finally, in the last of the light, the vardo lurched off the forest track and onto the main road. On either side the crowds were camped – wet people huddled in wet tents or not even tents, fires smoking, human stink and unhappy voices.

Lov squatted over everything, cold as a toad.

Top that!

(The photo is of Mostlysunny's cat Meadow, Taggle's avatar in the non-ficitonal world, and is used with her permission.)