“You have to have a love triangle; all the best-sellers are doing it these days.”
“Which means by the time this makes it through the publishing sausage-machine, it’ll be too clichéd for words and the kiss of death for the book.” Moira stretched her arms over her head and watched as her younger sister frowned over the scrawled post-it notes scattered across a bare patch of wall – the outline, such as it was, for her next novel.
“But surely they’ll be faster this time, since your first book did so well.”
“I wish. But the only part of the process that has to be faster is mine. They want the final manuscript to them by the end of summer, so if you could leave me to get on…”
“Fine, fine, but I still think you should make that Bertal guy sexier.”
Moira bit her tongue and pointed at the door, her unwanted visitor sighed, and left.
Once the door was safely closed, Moira wandered across to the wall. Bertal was a raging psychopath with significant morality issues and a complete lack of regard for both personal space, and personal hygiene. Not sexy, not going to be sexy, in fact he was now some sort of ogre/orc hybrid, and even the lady ogre/orcs didn’t like him. They had good personal hygiene.
In fact… Yes! There was the last character, the merchant. A lady ogre who traded in soaps and scents. Perfect!
And as a bonus, Bertal could choke to death on one of her soaps after she shoved it in his mouth to clean up his language.
The DNA of Stories 