And this is the other reason why I was a little succinct with my last post. Because I wanted to spend a bit more time giving a detailed progress update now that my first project is done. Because I know that it’s a bit of an investment to just leap into an unknown author’s first book, much less when that book is supposed to start a series. So this is mostly meant to help answer any worries and let you know where I’m trying to go for the future. If you want a bit of a shorter version, you can head over to my projects page on the main site, which summarizes most of this and has a few other project details irrelevant to this conversation: Projects Page
Ember King’s Inheritance
Obviously, the first issue to address is the supposed book 2 of EKI, seeing as I just released book 1. And I can assure you that it is in progress. It’s just been a little slow going. To provide backstory, the second book is kind of the first idea I had of EKI; the plot and villain is what I wanted to do from the beginning, but it just wouldn’t work out that well to introduce the series. So I did Nocturne of Fog first. But it wasn’t that simple either, because book 1 went through some changes too.
If you read Nocturne of Fog, it’s mentioned that Allard and Erica first met Adelaide three years ago, etc. Well, that was originally going to be book 1. The series was originally intended to be a long spanning epic as characters grew up, nations maneuvered, and ancient powers contested with each other. But I decided that wasn’t working for a variety of reasons and moved forward with Nocturne of Fog. Which is where some of the problems for book 2 come in. Because the plot of Nocturne of Fog is kind of a halfway between EKI 0.5 and book 2’s original plot. Put simply, Knife was originally going to be introduced in book 2. Which means that a fair bit of book 2’s plot would rehash some of Nocturne of Fog’s. And part of that is the point; I won’t get too into it, but it’s supposed to be a kind of ‘let’s do it better this time’ for the protagonists. But at the same time, I need to make sure it tells its own story and is interesting.
Thus we reach book 2’s 0.5 draft. I got a solid ten or so chapters in (estimated a quarter-ish) and realized that what I had just wasn’t working. It was too frontloaded with series relevant information without the actual plot itself developing much. So I restarted and shifted some things around and that’s where I’m at now. I’m making progress, maybe about a quarter of the way through a first draft, but it’s a little slow going because I did have to throw out a decent amount of work and start from the beginning. And also because:
Other Untitled Project
Thanks to a certain video game series, I got hit with a serious JRPG kick and came up with a kind of adventure story that’s meant as a love letter to the genre. Playing with some of the common tropes in a simple, classic adventure as the protagonist explores a new land, learns about the history of an ancient civilization, and uncovers a world-threatening plot. And when I say I got hit with a serious kick, I started on this project almost immediately. As it stands now, I’m a good twelve chapters in (estimated a third-ish) to the first part. Which brings us to the first problem.
This project is intended to be long. Really long. The way I have it structured now, it’s supposed to be one story, effectively one book. But when you look at the current progress estimation and do some math, you’ll see that this means it’ll be really heckin’ long. Both in terms of the time I need to put into it and the actual physical book itself. And so I’m not entirely sure where I stand in terms of looking at finishing this project. My current plan is to release it in three parts and then potentially an omnibus edition at the end, because each part will probably be a full novel length. But at the same time, I know that I really need to focus on EKI. So I find myself in the unfortunate position of being really in the mood to work on a largely untenable project when I need to focus on finishing a project I’ve already started.
A Tycortuan Fairy Tale
So this book is actually finished. Kind of. In the time between when I sent my manuscript of Nocturne of Fog out for edits and got the comments back, I worked on this project and managed to get a first draft done. It’s short, but I like it and am (mostly) pleased with where it’s at. For a first draft. So then what’s the problem?
Generally speaking, the thing is that it was a book I kind of wrote for myself. I had an idea I loved and I wrote it. But that idea might be a bit inaccessible to those who don’t have the setting knowledge I do as the author. Effectively, this book is related to EKI, but mostly independent. It takes place about two years after when the series would end from the perspective of a character who is important in a lore sense, but has no bearing on the plot of EKI. And this means that there’s a lot of stuff going on that kind of assumes you know locations in the setting without explaining them, references to characters that you aren’t really supposed to pick up on until way later down the line, and just mechanics that straight up haven’t been explained in EKI and won’t go explained here. On the other hand, in a narrative sense, it also has some stuff where I’m not sure how obvious things that I find obvious are. Like, in terms of motivations and themes and crap. It might still work for a broad audience, I just don’t know because I have no objectivity and haven’t heard back from any readers.
There is also a bit of awkwardness about the length, since it is short. And I don’t think it needs to be longer, but most fantasy books these days are pretty substantial and I don’t know how much interest there would be in one that’s barely above the 50,000 word mark required to classify it as a novel. But that’s a minor thing. Right now, I mostly stand at a place of ‘we’ll see when I get around to editing it’.
The Baron of Chevaladin
This one is a oneshot that I meant to work on while I was waiting for Nocturne of Fog’s cover art (there’s a whole other discussion there. Situations changed and I had to rework my plans, which is why the current cover is so awful). But then that Untitled Project kind of took over my life and this one’s been languishing since then. I want to get back to it, because it should be a pretty casual story and would be a fun little story with little investment, but… Well, I haven’t gotten that much done. At this point, it would probably be better to just finish EKI 2 first. So we’ll see.
Dreamtide
Sigh. I know that I have to list this one because I am kind of working on it, but I don’t really want to. It’s very much a personal project I’ve been toying with for about as long as EKI. And actually, I finished a first draft of Dreamtide 1 a full year before the first draft of Nocturne of Fog. So what’s the deal here?
So first off. Personal project. This isn’t exactly intended to be — what’s the word? — good. It’s a bit of an affectionate parody / just playing all the tropes as too the hilt as possible of a certain genre a friend of mine and I have a certain appreciation for. Now don’t get me wrong, I like the story. I like the idea behind it. But I’m not really sure there’s an audience for it in, well, my primary audience. Put simply, in my trio of college writing buddies, you could say I have a literature friend, a video game friend (the Twisted Jerk), and a manga friend. This came from the manga friend. You see, one night we were talking about various series (don’t worry, I’ll probably mention the main one at least once, just not right now) and a little before I needed to go back to my dorm and sleep, he said something along the lines of “Oh, so you’re going to write one of these too, right?” And I said no. Unequivocally. But then I had a full walk back to my dorm to consider it and thus we have this gem from the sealed archives ([Company redacted] direct messages): “I hate you so much. The idea for [Dreamtide] has started to sprout.” – Martlet di Rotstein, 2/27/2019 11:11 PM.
The other issue is that for as… something as the concept is, I’ve actually put a lot of thought into it and it kind of has way more setting lore than it has any right to. And so now I actually do want to take it seriously and make a good story out of it. And the first draft, just isn’t. It’s bad. And so I need to do a full rewrite which I have started, but not made much progress on. We’ll… We’ll see about this.
Summary
So what should you take from this? EKI 2 is in progress, I have another book pretty far in the works, and a oneshot that may or may not be edited some time soon. Also, Morningstar is a silly place and maybe I’ll be able to get back to my phantom thief oneshot if I find the time.
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