138: Siona’s Song
2/28/2025
I finished Siona’s Song last night, though I put a few odd tweaks on it this morning for a half hour before coming to work. I’m at work now, so I don’t have my word count exactly at the moment, but it’s 4,300-something words, and about 14 pages long, which makes it over a thousand words longer than any other chapter in Part Four: The Fever.
And out of the 132 chapters I’ve written so far spanning the first two books, there’s only been three that were longer. Maybe four, depending on precise word count, because Chapter 47: Womb of Darkness in Book One is really close to the Siona’s Song word count.
At any rate, this one turned out MUCH longer than I thought, and even when I was halfway done, I thought it would be one of the shorter chapters. And I have yet to transfer it from my tablet to paper, which makes me nervous. I don’t feel safe until it’s on paper, because these tablets are notoriously unreliable. Like this morning when it shut off while I was in the middle of tweaking Siona’s Song, and I couldn’t get it to turn back on.
Did I just lose a week’s worth of work, and one of the largest chapters I’ve ever written? I had a copy of it backed up as a draft in my email, but that would do me no good if the entire tablet was dead. Luckily, when I got back from breakfast the tablet was up and running. Apparently the battery just drained, despite the fact that its power cord was plugged in. There must be a faulty connection with the cord.
Oh well. Close call, and freaking me out a bit, but part of me was confident it would work out. And it did.
I loved what I wrote for this chapter, and since I foolishly threw away all my paper drafts and notes for it last night when I finished getting it onto my tablet, I knew I’d never be able to recreate what I had the way I had it. Sure, maybe a second version might turn out even better, but aside from losing a week’s worth of labor, I find it difficult to believe it would. Because it would be a soul-sapping experience and my heart wouldn’t be in it. It might even have been enough to forego writing on it again for a year or more.
So yeah, I’m still a little nervous, and will remain so until I get it completely transferred to paper. Which I’d be doing right this second if I didn’t have to come to work. I’ll probably forego my shower today in order to maximize every single minute of copying it down on paper. Hopefully I’ll get it done tonight, but it may extend into tomorrow. We’ll see.
What I love about this chapter is that it fleshes out Siona so much more than ever before. I gave away a few of her secrets, though the casual reader might not notice. Like the fact that Guma is actually dead. And that Siona is not from Ephrathah. And that Luala, Diallo’s mother, is actually her sister. And that Mosai betrayed her in the past.
Just about every major secret is exposed in this chapter, for the discerning reader. Though none of it is brought out in detail or explained how these things could be possible. It’s just my way of throwing the pieces of the puzzle out there for people to see – or miss – and let them put them together for themselves. Or not, because it doesn’t really matter for the narrative I’m telling now. And when these things do matter to the story the details and explanations will be made more clear as well.
I like the nightmare sequences, though they probably could have been executed more creatively so it feels more dream-like. The environmental descriptions while Siona is climbing Overlook Hill are probably way overwritten and losing the reader, but it will stand for now. I like the sequence as an interlude before the ritual stuff.
The Kassan Hisana exposition dumps about divination were stolen straight from Frank Herbert’s Dune, where Liet Kynes was dying in the desert while talking to his dead father, who was lecturing him about the lessons of ecology Kynes already learned decades ago. That’s always been one of my favorite chapters in one of my favorite books, and I just couldn’t resist lifting Herbert’s device for dumping exposition in a somewhat palatable way.
Yeah, I can be a shameless thief. What else is new?
Present-Day Reflection
10/10/2026
Siona’s Song remains one of my favorite chapters in Part Four: The Fever because it humanizes a character that could otherwise be stereotyped as merely the antagonist for the protagonist. For me, Siona is probably the character I have the most sympathy for. She deserves better than the hand she’s been dealt in life, and she does her best to keep things together and moving forward the best she can.
Though readers may not get this unless they’re paying attention.
