I did some work on Chapters 21 and 28 of TSoA1. I honestly don’t have that much left and I’m going to have to make a decision. Either I just leave this as more of a novella-length story focused primarily on Merlin and Uther or I cast the net wider to include more about other characters such as Caradoc Freichfras. I need to double the length for it to stand at the same level as my average novel. I need to think about it more. This is part of the reason I continue to delay the story’s debut on the site. A little more time and work and I should have it figured out, though. Stay tuned.

In an early chapter of TSoA1, the narration, from the perspective of King Coel Hen, says that he can trace his lineage all the way back to the legendary Brutus of Troy, the first King of the Britons. I hadn’t planned on doing that tracing myself, but it came as part of the deal. Interestingly, you have these two branches with the same descendants, only one flattens them out, making siblings children and grandchildren. I suppose it’s not impossible to have successive generations named after the kings in the main line, but I’m pretty sure the source just got the information wrong. Given how some of these alleged kings conflict with other information I have, the whole thing may be rubbish.

I was able to clear some things up with the lines of Conan Meriadoc and Ceneu ap Coel, which I consider accomplishments. I also managed to trace out Arthur’s descendants as Arthwys ap Mor. My original trees may have to be scrapped as a quicker alternative to trying to fix what I have. I already had to revamp the main tree once, so I guess it’s not much of a surprise I’d have to do it again. I need to spend some more time with the Arthurian legends and not just the pseudo-historical genealogies. While I am telling my own story, I’d be doing the legends no justice by leaving out some of the best material. There’s a whole lot of stuff just on Gradlon Mawr I want to explore further.

In short, no story progress to speak of, but since I did almost 12K during the week, I’m not hurting by any stretch. I think by the end of next cycle I’ll have come to a decision on when I want to start serialization. In the meantime, it’s on to TBP. With TTWC3 wrapping this month, it’s going to have to get ready for prime time. I was thinking about a biweekly schedule, but if I can finish at least two chapters a cycle, I won’t overrun the work in progress publishing a chapter a week. I like having at least one story on a weekly schedule, so we’re going to try that and if I do fall behind in my progress, I’ll switch to biweekly. Stay tuned.

I haven’t really made any story progress to speak of. Why am I posting then? Well, I was just going over Chapter 9 of TSoA1 to round out the narrative when I got stuck on something. I knew Budic I of Brittany was a kinsman of Ambrosius Aurelius (part of the reason he takes refuge there after the assassination of Constans), but I didn’t exactly know how they were related. Cue me spending hours on end (and still going) trying to sort out the royal/ducal family of Armorica/Brittany.

I’ve complained before about the contradictory information that I have to sort through, which isn’t helped by me trying to shoehorn the (pseudo-)historical chronology into the timeline I have set for the story. When family trees start getting recursive, try sorting that out. For instance, I have Prawst ferch Gwrgan as her own great-great-great-great-great-grandmother and Ionas ap Deroch marrying his great-great-great-aunt. >_<

I use plain text files for my family trees, which is fine so long as they aren’t too complicated and I don’t have to make a lot of insertions that throw off the spacing. When I have to realign entire generations, my system starts to fall apart. I’ve now resorted to slapping together hasty trees that ignore dates and such just to try to get the structure in order. I’ve put tons of hours into the work I’ve already done, but a lot of it almost needs to go back to square one.

You might ask why I bother with all this when I should just write the story. Besides the fact that doing a lot of work under the hood is part of my method, the interrelation of all the characters is critical for the political situation and navigating the complex spider web of marriages is a major part of understanding the dynamics of the world. When I’m making it all from scratch, I obviously have a lot of control compared to me trying to make sense of what hundreds of people have cobbled together over the past 1500 years. I must enjoy the abuse or I wouldn’t subject myself to it.

Anyway, expect more of the same before I transition to TBP. Stay tuned.

I managed to pretty well finish Chapters 14 and 17 of TSoA1. I’ve added a couple chapters, so it’s going to mess with the numeration a bit relative to previous posts. At the moment, I’ve made a new Chapter 18 and 28. The former shifts everything after it up one. I’m probably going to be adding more, so for posterity, when you look at the older posts, you aren’t going to get a precise relation to the finished product, not that it’s much of a big deal. I plan on adding more because I do some pretty big jumps in the timeline and want to flesh it out more. I’m already about halfway through the current layout and only have about 23K words, so I may want to add somewhere in the vicinity of ten new chapters so the final tally’s somewhere in the ballpark of 60K. There’s a lot of characterization that’s been glossed over, so it’s not like the new content would just be padding. Now that I’m finally getting into the story, I want to make the most of it.

I’ll probably spend the weekend fleshing out the chapters I’ve worked on and spend time with the genealogies. I’ve almost made enough progress this week to make up for my shortfalls the past several cycles. So two more days of TSoA1 and then I move on to TBP. Stay tuned.

This time I worked on Chapters 12, 19, 21, 24, and 26 of TSoA1. Because it seems like the general pattern for the story is short little vignettes, I may well have to expand the story quite a bit or we’re going to be left with a rather thin volume. These are among the things I need to look into. Volume I covers a span of 70 years, so there’s plenty to talk about. We’ll see what I decide to do. Stay tuned.

Because I have trouble keeping track of my place without the source text for reference, I ended up jumping around a bit, starting with Chapter 10  of TSoA1, then going to 11, 15, 18, and 28. You know how I tend to have a few paragraphs of narrative leading into the main event of a chapter? Well, that sort of thing tends to be my main focus when I’m handwriting stuff, often because I’ve often already jotted down dialog in the source text.

I know I said I was going to start serializing TSoA1 once I had at least ten chapters done, but I may be reworking the storyline a bit first. We’ll see. I should come to a decision by the end of the week. Stay tuned.

You wouldn’t think I’d be able to get much done with the old-fashioned approach given how poorly my hands hold up to extensive handwriting, but with enough time and sufficient pain tolerance, you’d be surprised what you can accomplish. I managed to pretty well wrap Chapter 8 of TSoA1 and make good headway into Chapter 9. (I mostly just need to fill out the narrative in the dialog sections I’d written previously.) It is a bit of a pain not being able to cross-reference with the main text or my other resources, but it certainly appears to be a workable solution. It seems I can still make good progress on paper. In fact, without any extraneous distractions, I may well be even more productive. We’ll see how things continue to go. Stay tuned.

I managed to finish Chapters 6 and 7 of TSoA1 and start on Chapter 8 in a fine example of the sort of progress I could make in my downtime at work before it was revealed that I’m not allowed to bring my laptop. Well, shucks. Now we’ll see how the analog approach goes. I suppose it’s good practice for what I’ll have to do if the electrical grid ever gets fried. Stay tuned.

It barely counts, but I wrote a few lines on Chapter 6 of TSoA1. I don’t expect to accomplish much more as I remain wildly behind on my translation project. Gotta focus on what actually pays money over what doesn’t. Stay tuned.

Guess what. More genealogy. I switched over from Cunedda to Macsen. There are fewer kiddos to deal with, but it’s still quite a tangle. I had to compress a couple generations to get everything to fit in the timeframe I have set for the story. Now, you might wonder why I do all this, other than my OCD. Well, the complex web of marriage alliances and such are critical for having a clear picture of the political landscape of the story and the more legwork I do, the better it’ll play out in the story proper.

Take, for instance, Chapter 3 where Constantine seeks to be acclaimed King of the Britons to buttress his claim to Emperor of Rome. We have appearances by Owain Finddu and Aurelius Ambrosius, but they wouldn’t be there if I hadn’t done to work to establish their relationship in the grand scheme of things. (Owain being the son of Macsen Wledig, a previous pretender to the throne of Rome, and King of the Silures and Aurelius Ambrosius being King of Gloucester and Constantine’s brother-in-law.) It’ll all pay off in the end, but I could literally devote a month or two just to squaring away the major families. Whee fun. (Oh, who am I kidding? I love this stuff.)

I had a decent start in the week, but I let the peripheral materials consume me. Necessary, yes, but it’s not going to get TSoA1 where it needs to be for launch anytime soon. Now it’s time to switch over to TBP. Stay tuned.