I spent the greater part of the day crunching number and pretty well resolved the Notian theater of the Trident War. That’s 32 engagements over a period of seven years and thousands of fatalities just counting combatants.

I also did a lot of jumping around, writing stretches of dialog and such for a number of chapters in TTWC3: Rowland’s Chapter 3,  Simona’s Chapter 5, Carpos’ Chapters 4 and 5, Scipio’s Chapter 5, and Mab’s Chapter 4 and epilogue. Now that the logistics of the Sixth Battle of Iakobin have been sorted out, perhaps I can make my way through Rowland’s Chapter 3 and move on down the line. Stay tuned.

I did a little writing on Rowland’s Chapter 3 of TTWC3, but most of my time was spent in the peripheral materials. I cited a number of troops under Rowland’s command and I’m having to go back and work the numbers to see that it’s actually accurate. You see, I originally just had statistics on relative troop strengths by year, but I’ve been working on a complete battle record for more accurate calculations. I may or may not have said this before, but I don’t believe in throwing out numbers at random. If I cite some figure, there’s going to be some documentation to back it up.

Also, because I was working in the peripheral materials, I was browsing my archives of older versions of my files (I try to preserve copies of earlier versions after a major change, such as my first and second compression of the Tellus Arc timeline) and I found myself writing a bit on The Knight’s Twilight. Having spent so much time on the Trident War, I’m starting to miss our friends in Gladius. I can afford the occasional detour, but now that I’m putting Tellus Arc stories on weekly serialization, I need to stay on target. I’ve got a few months of lead time, but that could get used up rather quickly if I don’t stay on top of it. Stay tuned.

I pretty well wrapped up Scipio’s Chapter 1, then got through Carpos’ prologue and Chapter 1 and did a little work on Rowland’s Chapter 3 of TTWC3. I went ahead and deleted the remaining chapters from the original version, so I’ve got a fair bit of ground I need to recover, but I think I’ll try going straight down the line for a bit. If I can at least finish the first couple sections, it’ll give me a bit of an anchor for my continued work. I started to think that I may not be good with villains given the trouble production of TTWC2, but I find Carpos incredibly easy to write. Perhap’s its a matter of anthopocentrism, but even though none of TTWC2’s cast are fully human, they’re rather heavily anthropomorphized. I dunno. These are questions I can ponder as serialization progresses. In the meantime, stay tuned.

I wrapped up Urgill’s Chapter 1, Garm and Scipio’s prologues and made a little progress on Scipio’s Chapter 1 in TTWC3. At the rate I’m going, it looks like I have nothing to worry about on the wordcount front with TTWC3. I expect the final tally will be in the 80-100K range. Yes, I know I’ve said that I’m not going to fuss over the wordcount of TTWC2, but it still bothers me that it’s turning out so short.

Part of me considers reworking the series into a chronological telling, but that would destroy the core design conceit and would require a lot more work than simply rearranging chapters. After all, can you imagine wading through nearly an entire book’s worth of introductory prologues for each of the leads, many of then taking place years before the main events of the story? The thought of doing special editions of my work feels uncomfortably George Lucasy, so we’re going to set that idea aside at present. I might try a recut as a thought exercise, but I doubt I’ll release it to the public.

In other news, I’ve been toying with the idea of doing reviews and posting them on the site. They wouldn’t be anything fancy or anything particularly in-depth, just brief run-downs of movies and such. They’d be text reviews as I’ve got a face for radio and a voice for the papers and lack a colorful enough personality to be a video reviewer (a field already filled with many more talented individuals than myself). I haven’t made a decision yet, but it might make for a nice little diversion of a weekly feature. Stay tuned.

We wrap up our coverage of the lead characters of TTWC1 with a look back on Corona the White Dragon.

I like writing nonhuman characters because it affords me the opportunity to think outside the box. I don’t take it too far because there needs to be some measure of relatability for the audience. Corona is not so recent an addition as Xenomachos, but she wasn’t in the early drafts of the story either. I honestly think her relationship with Ionathas blossomed as I wrote her.

There is no small irony in playing with the knight and lady dynamic when the lady in question happens to also be a Dragon. Elves and Dragons both have quite a bit of aloofness to them as a general rule, but Dragons also carry a great power and menace even when they masquerade as humans. Part of developing Coronas character was taking this strong, intimidating presence and softening it. It’s not like she becomes jelly or anything, but there’s a nice juxtaposition of these moments of vulnerability that I really like.

If you thought that her pursuing her revenge on Xorgoth was a poor decision on her part, I think you’ll find her bleeding and alone in a cave agreeing with you. Unfortunately, she never really thought out her rebellion and paid for it. The White Dragons were too beaten down after centuries of subjugation and too few in number to make a difference even if she could rally the entire race to her cause. It would’ve been better for her if she stuck with Ionathas (better for Ionathas too), but it’s just one more thread in the grand tapestry of tragedy that is the Trident War.

Well, I guess that’ll do it for now. I may consider doing a few of these for significant members of the supporting cast or perhaps cover characters from previous works (though a few of them have future appearances, so I may refrain and I may simply opt to do multi-parters). I’d like to get back to doing weekly commentary posts, so I’ll weigh my options. Stay tuned.

I wrapped up Urgill’s prologue and did some work on her Chapter 1 in TTWC3. She’s certainly shaping up to be quite a different character than how I originally wrote her. I may go into it deeper when her turn at a character spotlight rolls around, but before she was just a monster hopelessly infatuated with Rowland. Now there’s a lot more going on. My work on Orguz in TTWC2 deserves a good share of the credit. He too got fleshed out much better in this version and a lot of that development extended to Urgill. I’m thinking about spending an extra week continuing my work here on TTWC3 before switching over to Tico4. We’ll see how things go. I’m so close to wrapping things up there that I should really just go ahead and make the final push. Stay tuned.

I wrapped up Mab and Akasame’s Chapter 1 and got most of the way through Urgill’s prologue in TTWC3. I believe I’ve mentioned this before, but originally the entire Trident War Chronicles was bundled together in a single massive volume (though it did have the individual “books” that were later made into volumes). I wrote the prologue and Chapter 1 for each character before going back to fill things in, so that’s why I have such a significant lead on TTWC3, though I’m rewriting most of it, so it mostly amounts to a starting point for my reworking. I’d like to get through everything I’ve previously written before switching over to another project. We’ll see how that goes. Stay tuned.

Although I said I was going to go back to TTWC2, it seems that I’ve committed myself to going through everything I’ve written on TTWC3 instead. I got Mab and Akasame’s prologues reworked and started in on rewriting Simona’s Chapter 3 and Mab’s Chapter 1. For the most part, I’m finding that scrapping my previous work and starting over is the better option. This is probably some of my most drastic reworking of the Trident War series yet, but I think the finished product will be better for it. Part of me is considering shifting from the current biweekly schedule to a weekly schedule, running two stories a week, closer to what I originally intended for the site. We’ll see, though. I’d burn through my buffer rather quickly that way and if work picks up, I won’t have the same time to devote to writing. Stay tuned.

On a whim, I decided to do a little writing on CeleKing3. I then went through reading over/editing/reworking/completing the prologue, Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 of both Rowland and Simona in TTWC3. I may continue to do the same for the chapters of TTWC3 I already have written before getting back to TTWC2 or I may mix a bit of the two. We’ll see.

I finished my read-through of TTWC1 and rounded out the appendices. When I do a read-through, I make a point to read aloud. While the written word isn’t always meant to be read aloud, I find that if you have difficulty saying it, it probably needs reworking. I like to think that this helps keep my prose flowing smoothly. Doing a read-through of an entire novel in two sittings is a little taxing on the throat, though. I’m lucky I didn’t lose my voice. I haven’t had to talk for my bread and butter in a while, so I’m a bit out of practice. Anyway, once the update is out the door, I can turn my attention to TTWC2 and make some progress there. Stay tuned.