Cannon fire on my own canon

[butterflydreaming]

Jouet's father, Ligur, dies in one of the rare ways of faerie death. He is thrown from his horse and breaks his head open. This is the event that happens just before the beginning of Stadium, my 2013 NaNoWriMo, and I always had it in mind that Jouet's father's second wife, Yan, had secretly committed murder by doing something to the horse, but this wasn't a central part of the story being told.

I keep avoiding reading through the unedited novel. As I got to the mention of Ligur's death, reading today, I began to wonder if that itself wouldn't make a fun murder mystery. Someone would have to investigate Ligur's death. Who else but Jouet, the eldest daughter of his first wife, who hates her father for leaving his first family? And the way I picture it is that it happens when Jouet is about 17, her sister Lili about 11, her half-brother Aya 11, and her mother, Pae, still alive.

I love the idea of angry teenager! Jouet solving the murder of a man she hates. Maybe she has to find out the real killer because her mother is accused. Jouet could be racing the official investigator to solve the mystery. (Pae is a mentally unstable wisp of a woman because she had a nervous breakdown after Ligur left her for Yan, when Aya was born. Ligur wanted a son.)

And wow, that changes a LOT about Stadium. Rather than being more backstory, it's a whole separate story.

A murder mystery in the land of Faerie.

But in Stadium, I had a plotline around Lili and Aya meeting for the first time. That would be hard to believe, very unlikely, with the holes I've just blown in my previously existing story. Unless they don't recognize each other because of context, puberty, and use-name changes? That makes sense. That would work. Besides, it's not as if they were allowed to play together as children.

I'm sure this is a distraction to keep me from applying myself to editing the novel. Not just editing, but massive rewrites, I'm sure. *makes face* Now back to reading. I'm sure there is something surprising and delightful in here.