Does anyone even visit this place anymore?
Greeting everyone. \\^^///
To start, I’m sorry. I never wanted to take this long writing the next novel in the Brotherhood Archives. For my RoyalRoad readers, I guess the sequel to Hy’Ruh-Ha.
My intentions was to publish this upcoming novel in 2018. However, I didn’t and honestly couldn’t.
As I mentioned(maybe), I started project “Fight Song” some time when I started posting Wolf. I finished my rough draft in early 2017 and came across problem #1. The draft wasn’t the story I wanted to tell. I’ll admit, I struggled to write it because it honestly wasn’t a story I had even planned on telling in such a long form. In someways it was better as a novella on the other hand it needed to be a novel. And a novel I went with. “Fight Song” took on many forms story-wise before I decided on what would become the current story. The plot being nearly the same just everything different in terms of how I was to execute that plot.
When I wrote Hy-Ruh-Ha, I wanted to tell the tale of when Soletus and Mien met. However, what I didn’t get a chance was telling how they became equals answering the question mostly to me, why these two individuals become such great BFF in the future. So Fight Song became that story. Showing that and how Mien’s transformation from being shy traumatized boy, to a compassionate, sass master, and loving man he is in the future. I didn’t do that in the rough draft, so I tossed that draft in the proverbial trash and started a rewrite.
Now, just so you know, I normally don’t rewrite an entire story from scratch. I avoid rewriting an entire novel because it’s such a tedious process so it takes forever. However, with “Fight Song,” I had too.
As it stands, the opening three chapters contains the most from the original draft. Pt. 2 and Pt 4 were added in. Pt. 3 and pt 5 were rewritten from the ground up. And the decision to rewrite came at the worse time. My dad died in March of 2017. After the funeral, My ability to write all shut down. I a computer comparison could be made. I was running on safe mode. Some people can take death and use it as inspiration during their grieving period. For me, grief sapped all the energy I reserved for creative endeavors. All my energy went to just going through my day. Most of 2017 was spent with me watching Twitch, Netflix, and playing Breath of the Wild while also preparing to move from the mountains to my parent’s home.
My husband started over the road truck driving and I was alone a lot during that time period. I was packing when I could and driving four hours pre-move some of my things in with my mom. She can really get by on her own for the most part but, she’s 70 and had a big empty house with no driver license. Then June of that same year, my 10 year old dog Myia passed away from liver failure. Nothing we can do, it was most likely a birth defect. So yeah, 2017 wore on my emotions.
When 2018 rolled around, I still wasn’t 100% when it came to writing or really myself. I was about at 40% in my reboot my creative processes. I worked on “Fight Song” like a page a per day. Then I backtracked trying to fix pacing issue that arose up as well as characterization and plot problem. It was about the end of 2018 when I actually felt better. One day I threw myself at tackling the beast. I wanted to get it done and a pushed myself to finish the draft. I was finally left with a story I could work with I dove into editing for the print copy so I could re-read it and mark my changes and get ready for the posting draft. That is where I am at right now.
There aren’t any major changes. The title has switched to Edict and the story needs some revision and run through whatever grammar checker I can find then a text-to-speech and post.
At the writing of this blog post, I’m aiming for August 1, 2019 to start posting. There will be two post that opening week. A recap of everything that has happened so far, and the actual first chapter. However, the update schedule is the exact same. Every Thursday. However, After I get done posting pt 1 and pt 2. I’m going to take a short week break for extra prep time for pt 3, pt 4, and pt 5.
What can I tell you about the story? It takes place 6 years after Hy’Ruh-Ha. I don’t know the finally chapter and word count. The print draft stopped at 130K. The POV characters this time around is Mien and Kiao. They were the ones who told the best story. There is a single Oeric and a single Soletus chapter. Yes Soletus is one of the main characters still. It’s not action adventure. There is some action and there is some adventure. It’s not as slice-of-life as Hy’Ruh-Ha, Wolf, Masked, Unmasked(Seriously need to find a new title for this story.) However it’s still all fantasy elf drama story.
And for my RoyalRoad readers, there is a new cover image for Hy’Ruh-Ha because I wanted it to match the cover for Edict when that is released on August 1. So yeah, August 1, 2019 is Edict‘s release date.
So I hope that I can entertain a few more people for a little while yet. There is a follow up novella after Edict I’ve drafted not edited. I’ll start a little more on it when I get further in Edict. So there is that to look forward too.
