Yes, it has been three weeks since my last post. I've had things to do. Lots of things. Too many things.
I've been chipping away at a republication of Hollenguard: Book 1 as well as an omnibus edition of all three books in one package. I've settled, currently, on the three books existing within the omnibus in their entirety, epilogues and all, with "Book #" breaks between them. I have a separate file where I've integrated the epilogues into chapters so that the entire trilogy is one continuous story, but I seem to be the only person I talk to (yes I do talk to myself) that thinks it would be a good idea to publish it that way. If you have an opinion on this, I'd love to hear it.
I've been playing around in the early part of book 1 with some perspective shifts to combat what I perceive as one of the major issues that makes it read slow in the beginning. Getting the story out of Kamil's head allows me to do more showing rather than telling with an odd narrative monologue that doesn't really exist anywhere else in the entire trilogy. Oh, and I also fixed a niggle of mine about using Elysandria's nickname of Elys in the narrative. Now it is only in dialogue when characters address her as such. Sorry all you folks that appreciate my having reduced the name to something comprehensible. Say it with me: "EL-IH-SAN-DREE-YA"
Actually, I like it when people pronounce character's names differently that I imagine them. The correct way is how you say it in your head when you read it, just like their faces look just like how you imagine them. I remember getting a Dragonlance book as a child and thinking to myself as I looked at the cover, "That is not what he looks like at all!"
Besides, you should hear how I pronounce Cheyla's name. I bet I'm the only one that actually does so that way.
In other news, I've prototyped out a board game based on book 1. It may be unsurprising to all of you to know that I am a board game fanatic, and I've integrated some of my favorite mechanics into this thing. It's ready for playtesting, sitting here on my desk consisting of a rather tall stack of scribbled-on index cards and a bag of wooden cubes and plastic chits. All I need is a group to test it with, and the time to do it. I remember back when I had time for things...
Saturday, September 7, 2013
Wednesday, August 14, 2013
Cheyla's Bones
Funny thing about Half of Forever is that it almost wasn't published. At least, not in 2012.
After publishing Hollenguard I took a break for a month, and then I started to work on another project. This wouldn't be a sequel to my first book, but rather an exploration of what was going on in Valice while my protagonists were up in Denshire struggling to get to Hollenguard.
My primary goal in writing a sister story was to challenge myself to write about some morally grey characters. The cast of Hollenguard, as much as I love them, are mostly altruistic and good-hearted people. What was interesting, though, was how much I thoroughly enjoyed introducing the old music academy and The Empress of the Archin Thrall into the story. I knew that, before extending the books into a trilogy (it was never a guarantee that I would. Hollenguard originally had no epilogue), I would have to be able to expand the cast to incorporate characters like her. Otherwise, the cast probably would have started to bore me.
So Cheyla and Vamric were born. I actually had about a third of a book written about them before NaNoWriMo 2011 started and I moved over to Half of Forever. I've revisited it a couple of times trying to decide if I want to fix it up for publication as a novella or extend it to a fully-fledged novel in its own right. This is the reason why early on in Half of Forever these two characters are introduced, and why there is also a bit of a connection shared between Cheyla and Kamil. They meet in Chapter 2 of Cheyla's Bones.
The main reason I'm writing this blog post is that I revisited Cheyla's Bones again last night. I was so enamored with the story that I decided I would add on to it. I'm going to extend the story, do some revising, and release it as my next novel.
After publishing Hollenguard I took a break for a month, and then I started to work on another project. This wouldn't be a sequel to my first book, but rather an exploration of what was going on in Valice while my protagonists were up in Denshire struggling to get to Hollenguard.
My primary goal in writing a sister story was to challenge myself to write about some morally grey characters. The cast of Hollenguard, as much as I love them, are mostly altruistic and good-hearted people. What was interesting, though, was how much I thoroughly enjoyed introducing the old music academy and The Empress of the Archin Thrall into the story. I knew that, before extending the books into a trilogy (it was never a guarantee that I would. Hollenguard originally had no epilogue), I would have to be able to expand the cast to incorporate characters like her. Otherwise, the cast probably would have started to bore me.
So Cheyla and Vamric were born. I actually had about a third of a book written about them before NaNoWriMo 2011 started and I moved over to Half of Forever. I've revisited it a couple of times trying to decide if I want to fix it up for publication as a novella or extend it to a fully-fledged novel in its own right. This is the reason why early on in Half of Forever these two characters are introduced, and why there is also a bit of a connection shared between Cheyla and Kamil. They meet in Chapter 2 of Cheyla's Bones.
The main reason I'm writing this blog post is that I revisited Cheyla's Bones again last night. I was so enamored with the story that I decided I would add on to it. I'm going to extend the story, do some revising, and release it as my next novel.
Sunday, August 4, 2013
Tripping Over Plot Holes, Dodging Inconsistensies, Keeping Sane.
Writing is hard.
Never mind trying to keep the characters straight. I won't go into detail about how Elysandria and Kitarin did a magical switch with one another when one of them fell in the water in my very first publication of Hollenguard, except to say that it got fixed very quickly and thankfully before I ordered any physical copies.
With so many battles in Veil and the Void, it was also difficult to keep straight where all of the characters were and who was wielding which weapon. This is something that seemed to crop up with every single revision where I'd realize I'd misplaced someone or something; things that even my beta readers missed in many cases. Luckily, I kept re-reading the book until my eyes felt like they would just give up and roll off to find someone with a less tiring hobby.
Minor book 1 spoilers follow:
So why do the characters keep dropping their weapons? In Kamil's case, it's because the only exciting thing he'd ever done prior to fighting the Roukon is fall off a mountain. He's a stable boy. In Nijal's case, I guess it just became a bit of a running gag. Even Basil comments on it:
"You would make a terrible Warden. You cannot seem to keep hold of your weapon."
Go easy on him, though. He did just survive a fight with an Ant Of Unusual Size (tm).
Where are the other D'wammish that Elysandria mentions when they're traveling through the Mizzlemist? All we see is Pale Sisters.
Having their own adventure? Part of a story collection I'm plotting involving Illysidyl's adventure after Kamil and co. leave the awakening and before she arrives at Hollenguard. Oh, and it isn't entirely true that all you see is Pale Sisters. The Empress is, in fact, D'wammish.
Why doesn't Elysandria use a forge in Hollenguard to make D'wammish weapons?
Right. She does mention when telling her tale to Kamil that she and her former adventuring companions forged the hammer and some knives prior to a Roukon attack on a fortress. Hollenguard, however, doesn't have a forge. Even if the characters were to construct a forge, they'd be hard pressed to safely gather materials to burn for heat. And even if they were to get enough heat for the proper forging of weapons, they wouldn't have the iron to make anything.
But, yeah. Writing is hard. There are what ifs that are bound to crop up. In revisions I found myself removing over-explanations of things several times. At the end of the day, you just have to trust that people are going to enjoy your story enough that they don't need to question every avenue the plot could have turned down. If they don't, they'll be sure to tell you about it. And that feedback can only improve your work in the future.
Never mind trying to keep the characters straight. I won't go into detail about how Elysandria and Kitarin did a magical switch with one another when one of them fell in the water in my very first publication of Hollenguard, except to say that it got fixed very quickly and thankfully before I ordered any physical copies.
With so many battles in Veil and the Void, it was also difficult to keep straight where all of the characters were and who was wielding which weapon. This is something that seemed to crop up with every single revision where I'd realize I'd misplaced someone or something; things that even my beta readers missed in many cases. Luckily, I kept re-reading the book until my eyes felt like they would just give up and roll off to find someone with a less tiring hobby.
Minor book 1 spoilers follow:
So why do the characters keep dropping their weapons? In Kamil's case, it's because the only exciting thing he'd ever done prior to fighting the Roukon is fall off a mountain. He's a stable boy. In Nijal's case, I guess it just became a bit of a running gag. Even Basil comments on it:
"You would make a terrible Warden. You cannot seem to keep hold of your weapon."
Go easy on him, though. He did just survive a fight with an Ant Of Unusual Size (tm).
Where are the other D'wammish that Elysandria mentions when they're traveling through the Mizzlemist? All we see is Pale Sisters.
Having their own adventure? Part of a story collection I'm plotting involving Illysidyl's adventure after Kamil and co. leave the awakening and before she arrives at Hollenguard. Oh, and it isn't entirely true that all you see is Pale Sisters. The Empress is, in fact, D'wammish.
Why doesn't Elysandria use a forge in Hollenguard to make D'wammish weapons?
Right. She does mention when telling her tale to Kamil that she and her former adventuring companions forged the hammer and some knives prior to a Roukon attack on a fortress. Hollenguard, however, doesn't have a forge. Even if the characters were to construct a forge, they'd be hard pressed to safely gather materials to burn for heat. And even if they were to get enough heat for the proper forging of weapons, they wouldn't have the iron to make anything.
But, yeah. Writing is hard. There are what ifs that are bound to crop up. In revisions I found myself removing over-explanations of things several times. At the end of the day, you just have to trust that people are going to enjoy your story enough that they don't need to question every avenue the plot could have turned down. If they don't, they'll be sure to tell you about it. And that feedback can only improve your work in the future.
Tuesday, July 23, 2013
Kamil's Troubles
I wrote earlier a couple of weeks ago on how I wanted Hollenguard to be a story about people who are not warriors, and the lengths I went to in order to convince myself not to go down that route. I killed off some pretty impressive and colorful characters early on, and when my principal cast sets off on their journey they have a knife, a hammer, and a flintlock pistol between them.
Book 1 spoilers ahead...
Kamil's journey further echoes the above idea, sometimes to an extreme that I'm not always proud of when I go back and read the first book. He falls off a mountain in an avalanche, he's captured, he runs from the bad guys, he gets mauled pretty heavily and has to be saved from death before the third act. Oh, and he drops his knife halfway through the story. Kamil spends a good portion of the book injured in some way.
Revisions of the initial draft eased up on this a bit. In fact, his gunpowder had originally been ruined to the point where he couldn't use his dragon during the climax of the story (he was dunked in a river, after all). But since the story begins with a literal bang, and the dragon is such a fun weapon and so linked to the character, it was something I had to highlight at the conclusion. It also gives Kamil some power at the end where, otherwise, he was just helping everyone to run away yet again.
Ultimately, the world turns out to be a mean place. It highlights further Kamil's resolve when he has been hurt so often and has lost his home and people close to him, but he still manages holds on to hope. This bleeds directly into the core arc of the second book, lending weight to the sacrifices he sees others making on his behalf and ultimately propping up the impact of his decision at the end in a way that I'm very proud of.
Book 1 spoilers ahead...
Kamil's journey further echoes the above idea, sometimes to an extreme that I'm not always proud of when I go back and read the first book. He falls off a mountain in an avalanche, he's captured, he runs from the bad guys, he gets mauled pretty heavily and has to be saved from death before the third act. Oh, and he drops his knife halfway through the story. Kamil spends a good portion of the book injured in some way.
Revisions of the initial draft eased up on this a bit. In fact, his gunpowder had originally been ruined to the point where he couldn't use his dragon during the climax of the story (he was dunked in a river, after all). But since the story begins with a literal bang, and the dragon is such a fun weapon and so linked to the character, it was something I had to highlight at the conclusion. It also gives Kamil some power at the end where, otherwise, he was just helping everyone to run away yet again.
Ultimately, the world turns out to be a mean place. It highlights further Kamil's resolve when he has been hurt so often and has lost his home and people close to him, but he still manages holds on to hope. This bleeds directly into the core arc of the second book, lending weight to the sacrifices he sees others making on his behalf and ultimately propping up the impact of his decision at the end in a way that I'm very proud of.
Monday, July 15, 2013
This Post Brought to You by the Letter K
Kamil, Kesrin, and Kitarin.
I hadn't realized what an issue it was to have three principal characters of Hollenguard have names of similar length beginning with the letter K until I was rereading my initial draft. There are a few passages with Kesrin and Kamil speaking that were leading to speaker identification mix-ups. Oops.
The idea of these three names has been with me for several years, the origins of which all differ. It truly is just a coincidence that they all happen to start with the same letter. Each is a nod to a different fantasy story that impacted me greatly in my youth. I like to tell myself that it has nothing to do with some sort of deep-seated fascination with names that start with K, but then I ended up with a draft of book 3 with yet another: a character named Kels that had his name changed with a Find/Replace before I started in on my first revision.
What I didn't expect is how much of an impact having those characters' names so closely resembling each other would have on my storytelling. I bowed Kitarin out of the bulk of Half of Forever specifically because of it, and thus her part was replaced by Rinna and given a slightly different role. This gave Kesrin some fun character development opportunities and was ultimately a good thing, but I missed Kitarin a great deal. I think some of her heart bled out into her brother in her absence, softening his edges a bit when he otherwise would have been finding trees to kick.
I hadn't realized what an issue it was to have three principal characters of Hollenguard have names of similar length beginning with the letter K until I was rereading my initial draft. There are a few passages with Kesrin and Kamil speaking that were leading to speaker identification mix-ups. Oops.
The idea of these three names has been with me for several years, the origins of which all differ. It truly is just a coincidence that they all happen to start with the same letter. Each is a nod to a different fantasy story that impacted me greatly in my youth. I like to tell myself that it has nothing to do with some sort of deep-seated fascination with names that start with K, but then I ended up with a draft of book 3 with yet another: a character named Kels that had his name changed with a Find/Replace before I started in on my first revision.
What I didn't expect is how much of an impact having those characters' names so closely resembling each other would have on my storytelling. I bowed Kitarin out of the bulk of Half of Forever specifically because of it, and thus her part was replaced by Rinna and given a slightly different role. This gave Kesrin some fun character development opportunities and was ultimately a good thing, but I missed Kitarin a great deal. I think some of her heart bled out into her brother in her absence, softening his edges a bit when he otherwise would have been finding trees to kick.
Sunday, July 7, 2013
Hollenguard: Finding my Voice
In starting writing on Hollenguard, I was sure to play by the rules of NaNoWriMo. That means nothing written down prior to the first day of November. So at the start, with a white screen staring you in the face and no notes to reference, it was a bit daunting.
I fell back on my role-playing roots. All good adventures start in an inn, right? As soon as I started writing I starting thinking of R.A. Salvatore's work, particularly the Drizzt saga. I knew that, given free reign, I would want to write a story about great warriors that are nearly unstoppable in every epic combat that comes upon them. They'd be bristling with weapons, powerful with magic. Superheroes.
So before I'd gotten to page 2 I had put the first of several constraints on my goals: This would not be a story about warriors. And then came my first major dramatic idea: Introduce some warriors into the story and very quickly remove them. So Tol's company came strolling up to the inn to set off the plot, and to remind me as I wrote that this story wasn't about them. This was about a young man's journey, one that had just fired his weapon for the very first time. A man that hadn't seen a single battle, heard of any wars, and had a perfect view of what was to become an imperfect world that existed beyond his home.
But being that I'd never written anything before, I had put down nearly 50 pages before I realized that I was telling this story entirely from Kamil's perspective. I had two other great characters tagging along in Elysandria and Nijal, but it always had to be Kamil who was front and center. I was afraid to pull away from him. 'Isn't this what I'm supposed to be doing?' I thought to myself. It felt like I could do more with what I had.
I took a short break and thought about all the books I've read and loved. One stood out: Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. At a certain point in the book, the perspective shifts completely to one where the monster is telling his story. This was a wonderful shock to my young mind when I read it. I loved the whole concept of it. And so, overcompensating for the first 50 pages which I couldn't really go back and revise (50,000 words in 30 days doesn't allow for any backtracking), I dove into an entire chapter of Elysandria telling her story that lead up to her arrival at the inn.
This is a confusing chapter for several readers, and it's my fault. But it was also the funnest chapter for me to write outside of the very beginning of the book. I proved that I would truly enjoy bouncing the perspective around, and that it would only serve to enhance the story. I eagerly wrote my characters to a point where I could throw one of them off of a mountain (recalling the time where I, in fact, basically fell off of a mountain while skiing).
Cue Debo hopping into the book, and the rest of the story began to breeze by. And in my humble opinion, you can really tell. It truly picks up at this point and doesn't let up, and is as fun to read as it was for me to write.
I fell back on my role-playing roots. All good adventures start in an inn, right? As soon as I started writing I starting thinking of R.A. Salvatore's work, particularly the Drizzt saga. I knew that, given free reign, I would want to write a story about great warriors that are nearly unstoppable in every epic combat that comes upon them. They'd be bristling with weapons, powerful with magic. Superheroes.
So before I'd gotten to page 2 I had put the first of several constraints on my goals: This would not be a story about warriors. And then came my first major dramatic idea: Introduce some warriors into the story and very quickly remove them. So Tol's company came strolling up to the inn to set off the plot, and to remind me as I wrote that this story wasn't about them. This was about a young man's journey, one that had just fired his weapon for the very first time. A man that hadn't seen a single battle, heard of any wars, and had a perfect view of what was to become an imperfect world that existed beyond his home.
But being that I'd never written anything before, I had put down nearly 50 pages before I realized that I was telling this story entirely from Kamil's perspective. I had two other great characters tagging along in Elysandria and Nijal, but it always had to be Kamil who was front and center. I was afraid to pull away from him. 'Isn't this what I'm supposed to be doing?' I thought to myself. It felt like I could do more with what I had.
I took a short break and thought about all the books I've read and loved. One stood out: Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. At a certain point in the book, the perspective shifts completely to one where the monster is telling his story. This was a wonderful shock to my young mind when I read it. I loved the whole concept of it. And so, overcompensating for the first 50 pages which I couldn't really go back and revise (50,000 words in 30 days doesn't allow for any backtracking), I dove into an entire chapter of Elysandria telling her story that lead up to her arrival at the inn.
This is a confusing chapter for several readers, and it's my fault. But it was also the funnest chapter for me to write outside of the very beginning of the book. I proved that I would truly enjoy bouncing the perspective around, and that it would only serve to enhance the story. I eagerly wrote my characters to a point where I could throw one of them off of a mountain (recalling the time where I, in fact, basically fell off of a mountain while skiing).
Cue Debo hopping into the book, and the rest of the story began to breeze by. And in my humble opinion, you can really tell. It truly picks up at this point and doesn't let up, and is as fun to read as it was for me to write.
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