Sluggish words today, only about 500, which is a rare low for me when I write. But the important thing is, I wrote. I know most of what I wrote today will end up in the trash, but that's okay.

I know most of the big climactic battle I've written will end up in the trash, but that's okay. I already have some ideas for how it will be re-written later on. The important thing here is to slog through the rough parts and get this back story done. At the moment, I'm a few hundred words shy of 94,000 words.

On a couple of other fronts:

Earliest domesticated horses dated 5,500 years ago

Here's a snippet:

New evidence, corralled in Kazakhstan, indicates the Botai culture used horses as beasts of burden — and as a source of meat and milk — about 1,000 years earlier than had been widely believed, according to the team led by Alan Outram of England's University of Exeter.

"This is significant because it changes our understanding of how these early societies developed," Outram said.

Also, Joe Abercrombie has an excerpt from his forthcoming book Best Served Cold on his website here.

I've only read his first book The Blade Itself, which kicks ass, and will soon be reading the remaining two books in his First Law trilogy. This new novel is set in the same world and sounds like Abercrombie is continuing his excellent writing and characterization. His POV voices are outstanding.

And I continued my reading of George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series. Yesterday I read a Bran chapter from A Storm of Swords. Once again, Martin's writing is just brilliant. I can't imagine there's anyone better at unique third person POV narrative voice writing in the Fantasy genre at the moment.

If someone knows someone better at it than Martin, I'm interested.