“White Horse” Progress Report 3: 1104 words

Another successful meeting of the Unwritten writer’s group, this time resulting in over a thousand words on my part in my novella, White Horse.  It’s always funny how the writing process works, often beyond the writer’s control or planning by any means.  In this case I’ve begun a complete rewrite for White Horse with the thirty odd pages I’d done originally, scrapping them and just starting from the very beginning.  But in my head I still had the same beginning of the novella and where I was planning on having it go, and with today’s writing session, I found a whole new scene inserting itself into the storyline which had never been initially planned or thought of.  And now I can’t ever imagine the story not having this scene, and yet it just came out of nowhere.

Writing = awesome.

And now for a sample of today’s work:

In this world Big Brother was pretty much watching everything we did, but that was deemed necessary for our survival.  In my opinion, Big Brother was totally right.

“The Prometheus Deception” by Robert Ludlum (St. Martin’s Press, 2001)

Currently in paperback for only $7.99 is Robert Ludlum’s The Prometheus Deception. Ludlum returns once again to what he does best, as the master of the spy-novel world.  Nick Bryson has quit the spy world and has disappeared into anonymity, but fifteen years have passed and Bryson has now been called back into service.  Recruited by the CIA, he is commissioned to watched the moves of the Directorate, originally an ultra-secret intelligence agency through which Bryson was trained.  With terrorist conspiracy afoot, Bryson has his work cut out of him in Robert Ludlum’s The Prometheus Deception.

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Originally published on May 13th 2002.

Originally published in the Long Beach Union.

“The Viking Discovery of America” by Helge Ingstad and Anne Stine Ingstad (Checkmark Books, 2002)

A lot of people think that America was literally an untapped resource when Christopher Columbus set foot on one of the islands near the continent in 1492.  But it was really the Vikings who first set foot on this great continent, centuries before, and if you don’t believe me, well then read this book!

The authors share a historical interest in the excavated Viking sites, making thorough observations of the site where the Vikings first landed, known as L’Anse aux Meadows, in Newfoundland, and they have now conclusively solved the mystery of the first European settlement in North America.  Presented with original names for people and places, The Viking History of America enlightens you with details you never knew, presenting questions you never thought to ask, as well as answering them, as well as explaining why a lot of things are the way they are in America today.

And if that’s not enough for you, then how else can you explain why the Native Americans already had a word for people who looked like Christopher Columbus; people who were called “white man”?

Originally published on May 13th 2002.

Originally published in the Long Beach Union.