StanleyWheeler

James II Stewart, King of Scotland, may be my 13th great grandfather. I'm considering returning to the old country to reclaim the throne. If the records are correct, it would explain many of the impulses I usually refrain from following:
"James broke into a fit of temper and stabbed Douglas 26 times and threw his body out of a window." 

I understand how that could be very satisfying--for James, I mean. I'm pretty sure Douglas enjoyed neither the perforations nor the defenestration--but not being the actual king and all, I'll continue to refrain. It also looks like the link to James II is based on a son I don't see in the official records; perhaps an illegitimate son, a wrong genealogical connection, or a fake person. I'll withhold my claims to the throne at this point.

***
As for writing this week, I passed 42K words, meaning I'm halfway done. I had a sudden impulse (see above) to kill off a character but decided that the death would be meaningless at this point and something short of death would be a great opportunity to add to the development of two characters. The death would have had purpose but the impact upon the reader would have been minimal.

I don't like to kill off characters. I've killed off some in Rude Eye. While those characters had an emotional connection for another character; readers would not have become very invested in them; their deaths were important for how they affected the main character's choices. I killed off a major character in Justice Resurgent because the story called for it--but it wasn't fun to write. 

The good news is that the writing is getting easier as I'm now headed downhill. If I don't have to stop to look up something, I find I'm writing the daily allotment in less than an hour. It's still far from the homestretch but now it's a matter of laying down the scenes in the proper order and leaping from one to the next until the end.  Of course, there will be complications that I have not foreseen.

One fun part of the book is the development of the two magic systems. The major system has been developing from the start. A secondary system is one that I did not foresee when I started the book but it fits in as part of an aspect of a secondary character and has been fun to think about; it's much simpler than the major system in the book but has a lot of potential.

Most of the characters have been hurt in some way at this point--the title is Power to Hurt, so that should be expected.

***
Hank and Brett might wonder:
Could Stretch Armstrong have changed the outcome of Avengers Endgame? 
Would the conclusion of Game of Thrones have been more satisfying if Apollo Creed had danced his way to the throne to the music of James Brown?

I haven't seen either of those so I'm not qualified to speculate, but it makes you wonder.