The SEAFOX problems were real problems, all right. Big ones.
When I started running the story in my head from her point of view, the voice fell into place. The first scene erupted almost whole-cloth, like freakin’ Athena from the head of Zeus. (Opening sentence: "I had a name once.") Bits and pieces that had been scattered over a rough landscape without any more connection than "I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it," suddenly slid together of their own accord.
So. My choices here are two.
One — reoutline the damned thing, salvaging what I can, and rework the first scene into third-person, and write a new first scene.
Two — spend a miserable few months writing the wrong book, and then club myself over the head through a nightmare revision, a probably-rough editorial request for revisions …. In other words, a bumpy road on a bad horse.
Yeah, that sounds like fun.
Oh, right. It isn’t going to be SEAFOX anymore, either.
It’s going to be — probably — HAWKSPAR, after a semiprecious stone native to the Fallen Suns region of Korre, and for reasons too hideously grim to contemplate at the moment.