Werewolves of New Hampshire

There is a lot of fencing in my novel Linger (New title at request of someone I'm not mentioning here yet). A lot. Aislinn, my pov character, is a fencer, and she uses her sword as a weapon. For the most part, I was confident writing the scenes - I've been a fencer for lo, many years, competed at the collegiate and national level, coached the sport. I knew my blocking was good, and my coach actually did a tech read of a draft, and ran through all the scenes with me in real life, so I know what I wrote holds up.


Well, almost all the scenes.


There's one where Aislinn is fighting something best described as a werewolf. It's hugely outsize, and, because of the location, it's a close-quarter fight, so not at all the sort of thing I'm used to. 


I'm a tall woman, but my brother Doug, well, he's really tall. So when we were both home over the holidays, I had him help me block the scene: to shove me in a corner, dangle me by one arm, while I tried to get a foil between us to disembowel him. (NB: No brothers were actually harmed during the course of this slightly insane exercise.) Which is sort of awesome. But better still was my Mom's reaction, as she walked past this: "Kat, if you're going to disembowel your brother, don't do it on the white carpet please."