Recent Reads: HOUSE OF CARDS

So this is the book I had to rip 2/3rds of out & rewrite and revise what was left in 6 weeks.

It turns out I’d forgotten a LOT of what happens in it. I actually got seriously invested in finding out what happens! That was weird! :)

Like, I had no idea Margrit got involved with the selkies so fast in it. Not that I could tell you when I *thought* she had, but…definitely not that fast. And although in the actual descriptions, Kaimana is meant to be shorter and bulkier than most of the other Old Races leaders, I was reading his introductory stuff and I thought OH MY GOD KAIMANA IS DUANE JOHNSON and now I’m totally in love with that idea. *laughs*

And then Margrit’s off to face down Daisani, right? Around chapter 10 or so? And Daisani’s all shocked she’s there that morning, “under the circumstances,” and I tell you what, although I remembered what The Circumstances were as soon as I read that sentence, I had COMPLETELY FORGOTTEN that Those Circumstances HAPPENED. And then I spent the rest of the book NOT SURE who had PERPETRATED Those Circumstances! I forgot whodunnit! In my own book!

Also there’s a bit in the book where Margrit describes the perfect ice cream as “chocolate with pralines and a caramel swirl,” which Haagen Dazs went on to make for several years. I’m not saying somebody was reading the Negotiator Trilogy, but I’m not sayin’ they weren’t, either! (It really was stupendously good ice cream, and tragically, they’ve discontinued it. #woe)

Oh, god, the ball. All I can really remember about the ball is that trying to get the timeline to work for this book/that scene was MURDEROUS. I remember having to compress the whole damn thing so it would work and just augh. It was awful. It worked out fine in the end, even I can’t tell that it was horrific to write, but seriously, I started reading the ballroom scene and I was like AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUGH NOOOOOOO THIS WAS SOOOOO BAAAAAAAAAAAD TO WRIIIIIIIIIITE :)

I’d totally forgotten about the tango, which…didn’t turn out the way I thought it would. I mean, it did, but also it didn’t. So I wonder how I might choose to write that now, except, y’know, I’m not gonna rewrite it so it doesn’t matter. :)

MARGRIT AND BIALI AT THE BALL! “You’re all right, for what you are.” AUGH! BIALI! MY HEART!

I liked the quorum scene, though. I actually didn’t know how the last vote was going to go. I was sitting there counting the characters and the votes on my fingers and trying to remember what would happen. I wonder if it was different in an earlier version of the manuscript, or if I just couldn’t remember. :)

If you’d asked me, I’d have said the scene with Rebecca at Trinity Church happened in the 3rd book, and that the (apparently upcoming) scene where Cam finds out The Truth About Alban was in this one. I would have been wrong. O.O (I’m quite impressed with myself for Cole’s characterization. It seems like there may have been some Editorial Disagreement over Cole’s level of flip-out/hatred/fear/anger, because he’s basically a decent guy, but re-reading it I think I wrote him right, and well. I said modestly. :))

Ok, my last observation falls more into spoiler territory so I’ll put it behind a cut….

You know what, I’d actually forgotten how *badly* Janx is hurt at the end of the book? I mean, shifting from one form to the other heals the Old Races, but one shift, from dragon to human, wasn’t enough to do him any damn good, and there’s not a lot of chance or room for a ginormous dragon to shift back and forth until a near-fatal wound is reasonably healed up. Re-reading it, I was like, “Holy crap, I almost killed him!” O.O

I tell you what, part of me *does* want to go through the books and revise them so they match up with the short story & novella backstories better. OTOH, as I said, most of them are compulsive liars, but on top of that, I’d forgotten the *degree* of gargoyle memory degredation that Alban observes (because I’d forgotten he and Biali have a fight partially held in the gestalt), so I’m still okay with the memories not matching up with the short stories. :)

(Honestly, if I got to change only one thing in the entire trilogy it would be changing Margrit’s comment about the phone Malik ruined being a $70 phone, because that was an expensive phone when I wrote the book and…isn’t now. :))

I’m genuinely looking forward to reading the third book now. This is fascinating! :)