Update on Cat O' Nine 3

As you might have read from my co-author's blog, Renee is attending college for her engineering degree. (I understand it's part of her grand scheme for world domination.) This had made her quite busy. I would know as I was a pre-Engineering student in my wild and misspent college days. I eventually decided it was more math than I could stomach and switch majors but she's sticking with it. Every other week, she has some kind of exam or is studying for one  - and doing quite well! I couldn't be more proud of my "internet sis", but as you might imagine, editing and proofreading the first draft has been and will continue to be slow-going. Rest assured it IS being worked on and we're hoping for some progress during upcoming holiday breaks.

So in the meantime, a new story is brewing in my big iron cauldron downstairs in the mad comp sci labora... er... home office! Looking over the plot outline, I'm still deciding whether to make this a serious dark fantasy with risque tendencies, or a more light-hearted, tongue in cheek deal.

When do you use the pen to wield the sword?

One thing that's hit me is that in the first draft of Cat O' Nine 3 is that the villains are, well.... not all that bad. Renee commented that they were "pretty wussy" compared to some paranormal fiction she was reading. After doing same comparison the same myself, I'm forced to agree. But at the same time, I'm leery about going overboard with their cruelty just to make them "bad ass." In other words, its easy to write in violent scenes, but it gets a little harder when one tries to make sure the scenes do something aside from to show the reader how mean the character is. Character or plot development are the primary justifications, but even with this goal in mind, the line for "senseless violence" isn't a definite one. I still don't have the answer here. Perhaps it's different for each writer. But it's something worth giving a lot of thought to.