There are times when I sit down and I have no idea what I'm going to do. I know where I'm going, but the route is completely unclear. I have a notes file, just a document where I put all the things I think might be useful in the story--ideas for names, scenes that come to mind and so on. I pulled on some of that for this chapter, but didn't have Macca's story completely in mind until just hours before I posted the finished chapter.

I was watching the Science Channel (I <3 the Science Channel), a very well-done documentary called "Moon Power" about the influence the moon has on the earth. Great pictures of tides if you like that sort of thing, and I am geeky enough that I do. The scene where Macca hears Harla's voice is based on something that actually happens every 18.5 years at a place called Callanish in Scotland; they call it the moon skim as the moon traces across the "body" of a mountain formation they call the "Sleeping Beauty" and lights up a particular set of standing stones.

Pop! Into my head came the scene.

Actually, I got several ideas from that documentary. I'm always watching obscure History Channel and Science Channel crap that makes everyone else in the house roll their eyes. (Re-enactors FTW!) I sit there with my laptop making notes on everything from costuming to the way certain actors look. I was watching a documentary on bog mummies (I tole ya, weird, me) and there was a VERY handsome, very ferocious man playing a royal captive about to be sacrificed and thrown in the bog. He's my physical model for Brinnid and a few other guys of Sairish extraction in the story.

So there's some behind the scenes stuff for all y'all.