Contact!

Finally!

After months of beating at my characters forehead trying to get inside and figure out how he thinks I've made contact with the inner-Ice.

I really should have thought of food earlier....

Ice Rus is a human-tiger hybrid. He looks like a Tongan surfer with white blond hair and ice blue eyes most of the time but shifts into a large white and black tiger during working hours. He works as a law enforcement officer hunting down murderers and drug dealers. As someone remarks in the book, he adds a whole new level of terror to crime. You have to be pretty far gone to *not* be scared by an 800 lb tiger hurtling at you.

But for the longest time my relationship with Ice has been, well, icy. I've managed to crack every other character in the book. I really adore my antagonist and I'll miss him when he dies. I like the supporting characters. I can tell you all about them! But Ice and I just couldn't get along. He likes to play things close to his chest.

It's been the weak link in the book. To the point that people have suggested telling the story from anyone else's POV. But it's Ice's story.

So I finally put my beloved enforcer down in his natural setting, at work. I'd tried opening with him at home because I wanted to contrast the violence of his daily life with how he is on his own. It didn't work... This morning I woke up with a picture of him at work, finishing a job.

By definition his jobs are messy and violent. But it works.

There's blood flying by page two. But it works.

And when he's done taking down the bad guys his main motivation is a very large meal and a shower. My Ice is a very low maintenance guy.

This change in the opening chapters means rewriting large chunks of the first 6 chapters. I hate rewriting. But I think this time it might actually work and that thrills me!

I write for this thrill. I write so I can have this high of knowing exactly where things belong. Everything falls into place and clicks. I feel like I'm riding story, that I've broken the secret code, that I finally have the magic under control and the world is mine!

I finally have an MC who won't sit quietly in his book and wait for someone to read his story but will reach out, grab them by the neck, slam them against the wall, and make them love this story. :o)

I love this feeling!