Ennui

Boredom. Very bad thing for an author. I'm bored with this damn book. If _I'm_ bored, how in the name of all that is sacred and profane could the result be interesting to _you_? (Hypothetical readership "you," not represented by any concrete sales figures....)

Maybe it's the heat, maybe it's the grunt-growl-beep-beep-beep of the sewer project crawling on steel treads ever nearer to my doorstep, maybe it's the waiting to hear any kind (or unkind) word on GHOST POINT. Maybe it's the impending doom of yet another excessively-high-numbered birthday and the aches and pains of trying to keep our ancient house from falling down around our ears.

Hell, I'm due to trot out the _dragon_ in the next chapter, sixty feet of obsidian-scaled depressed dinosaur, and I can't even get interested in _him_.

Dog days of summer, and the dog has to be our neighbor's hyperactive yappy Jack Russell... (Yeah, I know I've committed redundancy in that description.)

Inside the writer's brain

(Not a safe place.)

So David's sitting in a canoe in the marsh, listening to Khe'sha teach the dragon chants to his nestlings. Once the nestlings know their history, Khe'sha can allow himself to die. It's that pair-bond thing with his dead mate Sha'khe again.

So David is thinking, "How do you treat a dragon for depression?"

But his brain keeps setting the words to "How do you solve a problem like Maria?"

Any filkers want to have at it?