Take my rider by my side

In a marathon revision session on Saturday, I finished draft 3.1 of Blood on the Ice (the post-revision quick readthrough polish draft) and sent it off to my gamma readers.  I thought you might like to see how things change, so here's excerpts from the first and latest drafts:

First Draft:

You see that? The glint in his eyes? That’s the cold, steely gaze of a killer. If it was ten thousand years ago, he’d be hunting woolly mammoths with nothing more than a spear and balls the size of coconuts, if coconuts were made of stainless steel. Our story is a little more recent than that, and his spear is a hooked stick of graphite with a wicked curve at the bottom, and although he’s still got balls like coconuts, the stainless steel is on the blades under his feete.

I present for your consideration our hero, one Hamisch Hamlisch, the first line right winter of the Fort McWilliams Fighting Aardvarks and the owner of the most unfortunate name combination since Boutros Boutros-Ghali.

The season opener had been, in a word, nightmarish. The Hazelton King Crabs had come into town and were handling the ‘Varks like they were only a bunch of juniors. By the time the third period was half over, the ‘Varks were down three to nothing, and Hammie thought half the team already had one eye on the clock and the other on the locker room door, because they’d given up.

The puck squirted free from the defensive zone and Hammie wheeled around to give chase. All they needed was a little bit of offense, something to get the team’s spirit back so the Fighting Aardvarks could live up to their name. He heard a whistle to his left and knew that Joshie Sumner had also broken free from the Crabs’ forechecking. The center iceman was one of the team veterans, like Hammie, which wasn’t saying much for a Western Canada Professional Hockey League team. The WCPHL was about as low as you could get on the totem pole of NHL affiliations. It fed into the league that fed into the league that fed into the NHL. The ‘Varks were supposed to be distantly related to the Tampa Bay Lightning, but nobody had ever been even called up to the Norfolk Admirals, much less the Colorado Eagles. You could make just as good money working the fryer at Tim Horton’s as you could in the WCPHL. Hammie knew that because his mother constantly reminded him of that fact.

Current Draft:

You see that? The glint in his eyes? That’s the cold, steely gaze of a killer. If this was ten thousand years ago, he’d be a barefoot caveman hunting woolly mammoths on a grassy plain with nothing more than a spear and balls the size of coconuts. Our story, though, takes place in a time a little more modern than that, and instead of a spear, he’s wielding a hooked stick of graphite with a wicked curve at the bottom. And although he’s still got balls like coconuts, his feet are encased in synthetic leather boots with stainless steel blades sprouting underneath them. No grassy plain here—just a sheet of ice as smooth as glass and a hundred times as slick.

This particular descendant of cavemen is Hamisch Hamlisch, the first line right winger of the Fort McWilliams Fighting Aardvarks hockey team and the owner of the most unfortunate combination of first and last names since Boutros Boutros-Ghali.

#

The puck squirted free from the defensive zone and Hammie wheeled around to chase after it like a prehistoric hunter running down his next meal. His dark, sweaty curls flew out wild from under the edges of his helmet as he skated after his hard rubber prey. All they needed was a little bit of offense, something to get the team’s spirit back so the Fighting Aardvarks could live up to their name. He heard a whistle to his left, glanced over, and saw that Joshie Sumner had escaped from the vicious press of the Hazelton King Crabs forecheckers, who fought to protect their three-goal lead. The slender center iceman was a four-year veteran like Hammie, which wasn’t saying much for a Western Canada Professional Hockey League team.

The WCPHL was as low as you could get on the totem pole of NHL affiliations. It fed into the league that fed into the league that fed into the NHL. In theory, the ‘Varks were distantly related to the Tampa Bay Lightning via teams in Virginia and Colorado, but nobody had ever been called up to fill a roster spot. Most players had no idea what teams were in their parent organizations. You could make just as good money working the fryer at Tim Horton’s as you could in the WCPHL. Hammie knew that because his mother constantly reminded him of that fact.

Hammie picked the puck off the boards with the tip of his stick and whipped it across the blue line. He was gassed after a full ninety-second shift, but staggered after it nevertheless. He and Joshie could at least give the other guys a few extra seconds of ice time to change up while they put on a semblance of offense.

Do you see the changes I made?  What do you think?