I don’t believe I’ve talked about the Three Pillars in any depth and now is as good a time as any to do so. We all have a multitude of influences in our lives and as a writer, there are three other authors who I consider the foundation on which I have built my work.

The first is probably the most obvious: JRR Tolkien. Tolkien managed to capture my imagination in a way no other author has. There are a number of people who criticize his style as dry, but I never thought that, even as an 11- or 12-year-old when I read through LotR for the first time. I particularly love Tolkien for the depth of his worldbuilding and that vast interconnected mythos he wove. My own great love of myth and legends is echoed by his own and he no doubt had an influence on my desire to study linguistics as well. The worlds crafted in my peripheral materials surely can’t compare to Tolkien’s legendarium, but you can surely see his touch.

Next up is Frank Herbert of Dune fame. I was older when I started reading Herbert, around the latter part of high school if I recall. Like Tolkien, Herbert has a lot going on when it comes to worldbuilding, but what I draw from him more his crafting of intrigue, the “plans within plans, wheels within wheels” and his portrayal of prescience and the twisted web of fate. Some allege Herbert is an iconoclast against the monomyth while Tolkien would be more of a codifier of it. If you accept this premise, then I guess it would make for part of a dualistic cosmos from which my stories spring.

Third is Rumiko Takahashi, the mangaka behind such works as Ranma 1/2 and Inuyasha. Takahashi’s inclusion among Tolkien and Herbert may seem a bit idiosyncratic, but Takahashi is an author with considerable range, from the romantic comedy of a gender-bending martial artist to the horror of her Mermaid series to the simple everyday slice-of-life pieces found in her short stories. I particularly like her ability to craft characters and play those characters off each other.

And there you have it, my Three Pillars. There are other influences, of course, but these are the main sources I draw inspiration from. For those of you creative types out there, who do you consider your primary influences?

I’ve pretty well finished Chapter 14 of Tico4 and did some writing on Chapter 15. Hard to believe I’m almost halfway done with the book. This quota thing is doing wonders for my productivity. I highly recommend it to all aspiring writers out there. I don’t think I’ll finish Chapter 15 before the weekend’s out, but you never know. Stay tuned.

More progress on Chapter 14 of Tico4. Believe it or not, I had to do a bit of research on poker for this one. Eagle-eyed card sharks will notice an apparent error, but will they be sharp enough to divine the rationalization for it? Honestly, even with the rationalization, it’s a bit on the flimsy side, but I’m going with it anyway. I should have the chapter finished before the week’s out. Stay tuned.

A little more progress on Chapter 14 of Tico4. All the mundanity I mentioned last is quite the buildup to the punch, I realize. Ever so devious. More to come. Stay tuned.

I made some progress on Chapter 14 of Tico4. I’m having fun mixing a dose of the mundane into the scenario in this chapter. You’ll see what I mean when it comes out. Stay tuned.

I did a little writing on The Knight’s Twilight. I don’t have it quite organized enough to say which chapter is which yet, but it’s still fairly early on in the process. Maybe if I start devoting more energy toward the story, I’ll get things more squared away. For now, though, we’ll be switching back over to Tico4. Stay tuned.

Have I mentioned that I patterned the leads of The Trident War Chronicles after chess pieces? I only bring it up because it seems that, originally at least, the characterization of my “king” and “queen” characters were among the weakest. Just as I didn’t have much to work with in the case of Solon, so too was Xanthe a fairly shallow and incidental sort of character until the more recent version. However, because she had more to do anyway, I didn’t seem to have to work quite as hard to expand her role.

During production, I did some shuffling of the overall Tellus Arc timeline to make certain events fit in better with the overall chronology. In doing so, I made Xanthe a few hundred years younger than she once was. Being over 400 years old may sound like a lot, but for a Light Elf like Xanthe, that’s about the equivalent of being around 25. The fact that she became Queen of Goldleaf before she even turned 200 was quite unprecedented. Her relative youth made for a good combination with Solon’s idealism.

Just as Solon had to deal with significant opposition to his vision, so too did Xanthe and I play this up more with the Law-speaker Sidarazel emerging as her chief adversary. I don’t delve too deeply into Elven society, though, as a large part of Xanthe’s character is that she’s spent most of her time trying to integrate into human society, returning to El-Alar chiefly for important festivals and ceremonies and having little day-to-day involvement with her own domain. Even if Xanthe wasn’t a telepath of decent ability, she’d be all too aware of how she was regarded by the humans around her. Indeed, even the closest human to her besides Solon, Lord Aristides, serves her almost entirely out of his loyalty to her husband and doesn’t have any particularly warm sentiment for her. She loses touch with her identity as an Elf but can’t become human either. It’s a sad, lonely existence. Her one refuge was her children, but Carpos became distant in the years leading up to his betrayal, leaving Daphne alone as her only other support.

Xanthe at least has the strength to suffer for her part in making Solon’s dream a reality, even though she becomes more disillusioned as time goes on. Perhaps her being a touch more on the cynical side is how she developed the savvy to do pretty much whatever it took to give the Darklands campaign the fighting chance it needed. Using the illusionist Gulmengoel to impersonate Solon after his death was a new addition, as I realized there was no way they could just pretend to have him tucked away for two years. Underhanded, yes, but the venture would’ve broken apart otherwise.

It might’ve been interesting to see what would’ve happened if Xanthe survived the Darklands campaign. I don’t think she would’ve abdicated the throne as easily as Daphne, but she probably wouldn’t have been able to rally enough loyalty to put up much of a fight. Hard to say. Maybe there’s an If Arc story to be had.

Next up is Daphne. Stay tuned.

I worked on Orguz’s prologue, Chapter 2 and epilogue. I also had to do some rather extensive reworking of the dynastic history and genealogy of the Goblin Kings of Shade’s Forest. Loads of fun. Daggone Goblins have so many bloody kids. The Labor Day weekend festivities are making it a bit of a challenge getting far past my minimum quota and even that much is done on stolen time. Let’s see if I can at least finish one of those chapters before we switch back to working on Tico4. Stay tuned.