While I was able to get by with some minor editing to Rowland’s prologue and Chapter 1 of TTWC3, by his Chapter 2 I had to scrap most of it and rewrite it. The Alliance’s attack on Maximilion is rather different than it was back in the previous version of the story, so I have to account for that. The layout of the city has changed as well, so that has to be factored in as well.

In other news, I should have those new teasers up tomorrow or the day after. Stay tuned.

Waking up around 1530 Tuesday threw me well off my game and I’ve been struggling to recover ground since. It’s been a bit of a mess and I’m under quota, but I’ve done some work on Orguz’s Chapter 5 of TTWC2 and started working through Rowland’s section of TTWC3. New offers for work on top of my current work and the rising tide of activity leading up to Christmas have kept me hopping.

In other news, I watched First Knight last night and that’s inspired me to go forward and post the teasers for my Arthurian Cycle. Look forward to that in the next couple days. Stay tuned.

Well, I missed a couple days. In my defense, I at least did a fair bit of work on the Erdi map Saturday, but as you know, the quota only applies to actual story content. However, going into the new week, I was able to get Orguz’s Chapter 4 of TTWC2 mostly finished and make a little progress on his Chapter 5 as well. The goal is to wrap up his section this week and hopefully make some headway into one of the others. It’d be nice to get TTWC2 wrapped up in the near future so I can move on to TTWC3. Actually, I may start working more on TTWC3 because I’ve barely touched it since starting in on Version 3 of the story. More to come. Stay tuned.

I did some work on Medusa’s Chapter 1 and 3 of TTWC2. In all truth, I wasn’t paying as close attention to the timeframe of Chapter 1 and had to do some adjustment to make events properly mesh with the timeline. It’s a good thing I mark the chapters with the dates or that would’ve been a lot more work later on.

Wanting a bit of a change of pace, I started playing around with the Celestial Kingdom books again, doing some light editing of what I’ve already written and trying to fill out the outline more and get the plot squared away. I still have very little sorted out for CeleKing1 and huge gaps in CeleKing2 and 3. Things to do, things to do. Stay tuned.

Lord Xenomachos stands out as one of the more recent additions to the story. He was invented solely for the purpose of balancing the chessboard with another rook, but I think I was able to do some interesting things with him.

Had Xenomachos simply been a loyal legate, he wouldn’t have been that much different from Lord Aristides and if his primary thing was his former exploits, he’d be much like Duke Cronos, minus the burden of contending with the Promethean Alliance. When I was thinking of his hook, I came up with a great idea to set him apart from the others. Because one of the primary conflicts within Zephyr was between Solon and the Church, why not have a character trapped in the middle? I didn’t want Xenomachos to be a calculating schemer like the Archbishop but rather a simple pious man who takes his devotion to God and King quite seriously. In fact, his simple steadfastness is the main reason the Archbishop couldn’t exploit him to the fullest.

I can’t help but feel sorry for the guy. He’s not dumb by any means, just simple and rather innocent. He hasn’t got a head for intrigue at all. Such an earnest and forthright character is really appealing to me in a story filled with so much political machination.

I feel it’s a bit of a shame I could only devote a single chapter to his love of Queen Xanthe. When I was thinking about when Xanthe psychically shared her entire heart and soul with the whole of the Zephyrian forces, it didn’t take much of a leap to realize that if you opened yourself up so fully to a person as pure-hearted as Xenomachos, he couldn’t help but love you. This is an important step for his character because while he showed all due deference to her station as Queen, he held a rather strong prejudice against the Elves. This prejudice was, of course, common throughout Zephyr, encouraged by sources sacred and secular alike, but the fact remains that he was predisposed against her just for what she was and then transcended that. Now, I’m not naive enough to say that all prejudice can be overcome through mutual understanding (and, strictly speaking, not all prejudice is a bad thing, but that’s a long and convoluted discussion for another venue), but a lot of harmful and baseless prejudice has a hard time standing if both sides open up in good faith. Xenomachos is an example that shows that Solon’s dream wasn’t entirely a vain one, just outmaneuvered and outgunned.

It was a bit of a mercy on my part to give him a heroic last stand in the Darklands because it’d be far too cruel to put him in the middle of Gamaliel’s coup against Daphne. I believe he would’ve stood with Daphne, but the conflict within him would’ve destroyed him. I know I tend to give my characters rather miserable and tragic ends, but sometimes I show a little kindness.

Because it’ll be a while before Corona’s section ends, I may consider spotlighting a character outside TTWC1. Stay tuned.

I did some work on Medusa’s prologue of TTWC2. I may be switching gears soon. We’ll see. Stay tuned.

I made a little progress on Orguz’s Chapters 4 and 5 of TTWC2. If I really worked at it, I could probably finish his section by the time the weekend is out. I don’t know if I’ll pull this off or not, but it gives me something to shoot for. Part of me feels tempted to reformulate The Trident War Chronicles into a more linear narrative, but I would necessarily have to lose most of the individual prologues and that would sacrifice a lot of background material. Also, the cast would probably become unwieldy if all three factions got full representation. For better or for worse, I think the current formula has to stand or else I’d need to do some major top-to-bottom rewrites and that’s not a terribly appealing idea. More to come. Stay tuned.

I’ve been rather busy the past couple days. I did a little work on Orguz’s Chapter 4, went through the entirety of Dox’s section (most of the work was minor tweaks, but there were a couple chapters that needed filling out), I tweaked Ophis Python’s prologue and mostly finished his Chapter 1 and epilogue, and I mostly finished Xorgoth’s Chapter 1, all of this being in TTWC2.

That’s some good headway, but at the rate I’m going, I’ll be lucky to make 50K words. Even though I’m not actively seeking publication at the moment, I try to think in terms of publications standards, so I really try to shoot for at least 70K with my novels. One of the joys of self-directed online serialization is that I don’t absolutely have to worry about this kind of beancounting, but it still sticks in my mind. Ideally, each book is as long as it needs to be and that’s that. Looking at how publication works in Japan, it seems you can get away with that more. For instance, I’m reading the Full Metal Panic! light novels and I’ve currently on the fifth book, which is rather thin compared to the others. It just happens to be the length of the story Gatoh intended to tell. However, you may need to have a certain degree of stroke to get away with that. I don’t claim to be an expert on the American publishing industry, so I definitely can’t make any significant claims when it comes to its Japanese counterpart. That being said, I have a feeling I’d have an easier time getting a publication run over there than I would here. Perhaps I’ll take that Japanese novel-writing course after all…

Here’s something you haven’t seen in a while. I’ll dispense with any excuses, apologies or empty promises. Instead, I’ll just say that I did a little work on Orguz’s epilogue of TTWC2. I swear, just clearing out the number of spam comments before they get out of hand is almost incentive enough to be meeting my daily quota. Hopefully there’ll be more to come. Stay tuned.

I did a little work on Chapters 5, 6 and 7 of BroPen. Right now I’m mostly just laying down a little dialog so I have something to build on when I go back through to write out the full chapters. I’m trying to decide whether or not I want to stick with BroPen a while longer or switch over to something else. With all the work that’s coming in, I’m having to focus a lot on that, but that isn’t a bad thing. Stay tuned.