Met my writing targets for last night, finished the chapter and moved on to the next. Yay! For someone who is as easily distracted as I am by any excuse not to write, this week has been an amazing success story. Here's a passage from the fruits of my sleepless labor:

"You were close to being freeholden?"

Jachym nodded. "In the s-spring."

"Gads, your parents must be real greedgrubbers," Gauthier said, shaking his head. His expression softened. "What'd you do to make them hate you so?"

"I don't know," Jachym answered. "I worked hard for them. Harder, after the floods. Matka and Otec didn't bond me last year, even when the drought got so bad that the river dried up and you could walk across and not get your feet wet. I never thought my parents would bond me. Our crops died. We had to sell our goats to buy bread. So this year the rains came. And never ended. Tvůrce is a twisted sort of god, if that's the way he answers prayers."

"No younger brother they could've bonded instead?"

"Two sisters. Ama and Dru. They're twelve and ten," Jachym said, tears welling in his eyes again. "Matka says there aren't enough girls in Neu Breclav, so they'll bring a good bride-price in a few years."

Gauthier whistled lowly. "Gads, you never had a chance."

"I wish they were dead. Let Tvůrce deliver that prayer."

I know my production is going to drop off at a certain point, because right now I'm covering ground that I've plowed before, so to speak. I'd love to be cranking out 2,000-plus words a night, but that's not something I'm capable of as a writer. At least, not when I'm having to stay up past 1 in the a.m. to achieve the current production levels. I'm pretty darn bleary in the mornings these days.

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