Occasionally (often) I pause and wonder WTF I’m hoping to do with these books – these incredibly complicated yet seemingly simple books, with their short story voice and their long-form goals, their delicate language and blunt characterizations, and I kinda weep for any of it ever working.
And then I write something like this, and I think “yeah, fuck it, who cares, this is fucking gorgeous.”
———————–
Gabriel dreamed of death.
He stood in the middle of a creek bed, dry and mud-cracked, the sun cold and heavy on his bare shoulders, and knew that he should not turn around, that the night bird waited for him.
Not for you.
“That doesn’t make it better.†His dream-voice was higher, lighter, the voice of a child, not a man. That was how the dreamspace saw him, Old Woman had said. Foolish, but teachable.
Be careful, Two Voices.
He was always careful. Too careful, Old Woman had said, in a tone that said it wasn’t a good thing, not like a hunter was careful, but like a coward.
Gabriel had never denied it.
(from the WiP, aka Devil’s West #2)