Two steps forward, one step back...

Sometimes, you're just wrong. I have been troubled by my draft of the first chapters of Kingdom Come since I wrote them, and finally realized they're simply not up to scratch. Too cerebral, too... slow. 

So I am scrapping them and starting over. The good parts will end up in other places in the book. The rest, I will archive (I don't delete my stuff).

This is part of the creative process. Dragon Seed was halfway finished when I realized it wasn't my best work. I went back and rewrote about 70% of it, discarding close to 25,000 words, or 50 pages. Once you're on the right course... the story tends to almost write itself.

Here's the new opening. No lie, though - it's pretty raunchy:

No man ever really believes he’s going to war. Not when you’re in bootcamp, not even when you’re in the damn troop carrier, shitting yourself alongside four hundred other sweating, nervous rookies. It doesn’t matter what kind of person you are, either. Even the gunhumping patriot types don’t really get it - not until the night after they’ve been shot at for the first time.

I’m not talking about the quaking gut and the twitch in the mouth during that first patrol. Not the immediate, trained reaction you have when someone makes an attempt on your life, the cool disbelief that someone actually did it. The realization comes when you’re in your bunk that night after, where you're like: “Shit. It’s real. I’m really here, we’re really at war, and I’m probably going to die.”

That thought was easily the most terrifying thing I ever experienced, though it quickly gave way to this kind of... jaded acceptance. If you don't want to die, you digest reality, break the horror down, and adapt. I quickly forgot the old life, the old Hector Park, and peace became this surreal, abstract thing. After that first night, I don't think I ever really believed in peace again.

I’d been stuck on battlefields for five years before I took a break from combat to get sick and die. Now, in my virtual life-after-death, I was headed back to war. I wasn't sure how I felt about it. My only consolation was that I was a volunteer this time around. Well... that, and the dragon. AND the beautiful naked woman in my tent.

Suri was still asleep when I jolted upright, head and cock hammering with urgency. Dizzy, disorientated, I flailed my way out of my bedroll and tumbled onto the cold floor. I was starving hungry, frustrated and horny. I felt the powerful need to bite, to flex my claws into the hide of the goat buck picking his way across the steep rock face below…

Hang on. What? 

Grimacing, I ground the heels of my palms against my eyes.

Somewhere not far from our camp, Karalti positioned herself against the sun, hovering like a kestrel in the fierce mountain winds as she watched her bleating prey shuffle along the cliff face. I felt her – her body, her need, her hunger. And she felt mine, when I opened my eyes and saw Suri sprawled out on our bed. She was a tall woman, sleek with muscle. Delirious, I drank in the sight of her, from the swell of her hips to the soft curves of her breasts, and then froze. Her face was turned away, shrouded by a tousle of brilliant red curls. Her neck was exposed, pulse beating slowly.

I blinked. Somewhere outside, my dragon folded her wings to her body and plummeted out of the sky like a thunderbolt. My stomach fell out – not with terror, but with pure, unadulterated excitement.

Vibrating with hunger, I slunk up like a hunting panther and crawled over Suri, pushing her over to her back. She murmured sleepily, then gasped and arched as I pinned her down by the wrists.

“Hector…?” She writhed under me, her breath coming in short pants. “What’s the mmmm—ohhhh!”

The dragon hit the ram with her back feet, driving him against the cliff wall as he screamed, a sound I heard through Karalti’s ears and my own as the sound echoed across the mountain valley outside. Her jaws closed on the back of his neck as my teeth clamped down on Suri’s throat. Razor sharp teeth pierced the thick hide, filling Karalti’s mouth with a warm, sweet rush. I moaned, roughly pushing in between Suri’s thighs.