Lots of words, not much else.

The words have come. Flowed even. They're not good words, but by gum, I think I will win NaNoWriMo this year. I haven't caught up with Jean yet and I shudder to think how many words G.Smith is ahead of me, but I'm going to make it. Otherwise, the weekend hasn't been good. So we'll just fill this entry with a short excerpt from Tin Man Dark, which is apparently my attempt to show you what a hundred monkeys would produce when they weren't copying Shakespeare.

Excerpt from Tin Man Dark

From Chapter 5: Black Blood

      It was always that way. That moment when I held a life in my hands. I always paused. Not enough for a normal human to notice, but enough that the other Tin Men had noted it, particularly Rebarr who had no patience with what she called my squeamishness.
      But she was wrong, of course. I was a Tin Man. We didn't hold life in any particular regard. I couldn't feel any differently; the chempack made sure of that. But I paused because I felt like I should. The whitecoats could obviously do miracles of a sort, but despite their knowledge, they had never been able to create life. Clone it, change it, torture it, but they couldn't make it. I paused because I was ending something that no one could create again. Life deserved that pause, that moment.
      That was enough. With a quick twist, I broke the guard's neck.
      Rebarr frowned at me. "Took long enough," she growled.
      I didn't respond. No point.
      "I've got the target," Vipe said, tapping on the infrared scanner link. "Third floor. Back of the building. But look at this."
      The scanner showed four people in a room moving around next to the Tallings. Tallings registered the normal temp for a human. But the other four blazed in the scanner.
      "That can't be right," Seven said. "Scanner must be off."
      "It isn't," Vipe said. He looked at us.
      "Could they be on fire?" Day asked.
      Rebarr frowned at her. "Oh, that's it. They've set themselves on fire, and now they're sitting down to let the blaze die off."
      Day's face twisted. I moved from between her and Rebarr.
      Vipe cut off whatever Day was about to say. "They're between us and the target. We're going to find out soon enough. Move out."
      Two other guards patrolled the first floor. One making his rounds, the other in the can. Zone used a knife on second, Rebarr did something nasty to the one in the can. She came out with blood on her cheek. Sometimes I thought she enjoyed the killing, at least as much as a Tin Man can.
      We went up the stairs, staggered formation but encounted no resistance. For a man wanted dead by most of the major powers, Tallings was curiously lax about security. Unless those four unknowns were his security. I flashed back to the strength and speed of Laero Sone. I wondered how he would have registered in the scanner.
      We ghosted down the hall, checking rooms as we went. Expensive office furniture in one, cutting edge computers in another. The last door led into the room that led to Tallings. At the door, we paused. Vipe smiled at us. I glanced around. We were Wave Team 7. Tin Men all. Unbeatable. Untouchable.
      A minute later, half of us were dead, and the rest of us were running for our lives.

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