What next?
Well, I don't know. I really don't. So I'm going to flick through my how-to book in hopes of finding a bit worth sharing.
It's a rather old book, by the way: it's called (very originally - NOT) 'How to Write a Novel' and it's by John Braine, who was moderately successful in his time but not exactly on the bestseller lists nowadays... this was published in 1974 so it's of an appropriate age to be pressed into service as an aid to writing AotB fiction although I don't suppose for a moment its author would have approved!
He gets up my nose by quoting very long passages from his own works to show how it ought to be done - I'd much rather he'd stuck to other people's - and by being very opinionated. But there is good advice to be had along the way and occasionally I find I completely agree with him...
There is this quote from a Mr Irving Wallace that struck a chord: 'Too many authors will avoid what threatens to be an impossibly difficult scene... and instead will write around it, rather than into it, simply from fear that they do not possess the perception or skill to master it.'
That sums up yours truly and sex scenes just perfectly!
(Although I am screwing myself up to ensure that in the next one I go right into it and not just around the edge...)