I'm currently taking a writing break as I prepare for some much needed vacation time. However, in between work and cleaning things up, I'm also spending some time rereading my books. I'm currently on Chapter 15 in The Fourth Age. What do I think when I read my books? I love this story. I love my characters. I wrote this primarily for myself. I wanted it to be the perfect blend of action and character development. I wanted it to capture the emotions I was feeling when I read or watched similar scenes in books, movies or television. On all these fronts I'm extremely pleased. If I was starting over or rewriting these books now, there is very little, if anything in regards to these aspects that I would change. It's still the best damn story in my head.
That doesn't mean I don't sometimes cringe over the actual sentence structure and use of grammar. I don't want to imply it's bad. It's not. Sometimes it's good. But there are passages and sometimes pages that could use some improvement. I'm sensitive to each sentence I wish I had written better. I'd like to think I've learned how to do better along the way. So will I ever take the time to rewrite and improve some of the grammar? I doubt it. I'm self-published and it's does cost money to publish these books. I put them out there for the few who want to read them and the friends and family who care. If you have similar ideas, just be aware that quality does not equal profit. I suspect that is true for a majority of books in circulation. Besides, writing is fun. Going back and rewriting an already published book is not fun.
So as I'm rereading my first book (for over the tenth time), it brings back memories of how and why I went about starting this journey. Of course I've documented in several blogs that the story started out as a dungeons and dragons adventure and from there became the epic adventure I eventually wrote. But what thoughts went into it's creation? I'd like to spend the next several paragraphs sharing some of those thoughts. WARNING: There are spoilers. I'll try to keep them to a minimum, but they are there. Stop now if you don't want to know any of the reveals until you read them.
First, I wanted an epic story. I wanted a story that would start one way, but as layers are pulled back would reveal a whole new story. So at a high level I mapped out each book. At one point I thought the story might take twelve books to tell. Then at another point I thought it would take seven. Finally, I decided that the main story was best served in three arcs and each would encompass it's own trilogy. I toyed with the idea of writing three books that would be compilations of short stories that provided more background into some of the characters. I still toy with that idea once in a while, but for the most part those background stories ended up as shortened flashback sequences in the body of the main work.
So what were those three main story arcs? MAJOR SPOILER ALERT: The first one would serve as a classic battle of good versus evil, but with some shades of grey. I needed to introduce a brand new world and along the way explain how it worked. It was important that while the world feel familiar to the reader, it was definitely not Earth. I didn't want to get bogged down in trying to make the story fit historically into Earth's timeline. I love history and I wanted to create my world's history. Of course I knew good would triumph over evil, but it was designed as a setup for an even greater evil in the second trilogy. I also needed my characters to grow and become more powerful if they were to survive.
I decided to lean heavily upon magic in my series. So when things happen that can't be explained physically, just attribute it to magic. Or you can attribute it to divine intervention. Take your pick, but if it feels like something couldn't happen, I wanted a world where wondrous and strange things can happen. I wanted the first book to tell about the gathering of heroes and I wanted to introduce them through an epic quest. The first book was always intended to end with the catatrophic event prophecized throughout. I wanted it to have a little bit of a feel that the heroes are racing against a clock they can't see, and in the end of this chapter they would lose.
Volume two was intended to complete the heroes journey. I wanted them to experience loss and toughen them up for the final chapter of the first trilogy. I wanted to take Celecia and Dakoran's journey and take their romance to the next level. While this first trilogy spends equal time on a number of characters, the story was always intended to center around their journey. No one suffers more loss in the books than Celecia, but at the core of her being is strength founded in love and hope. That was a gift left to her by her father and one she would not relinquish for the entire series. I also wanted a romance that would have bumps along the way, but was also firmly grounded in openness and trust. Read and you'll see what I mean. To an extent that openness was forced upon them, but they also didn't back away from it.
Volume three was intended to end the first trilogy. While the heroes completed their journey in the second book, now the story becomes a little bit of a chess game. They find Terek has significantly expanded his control and set up a base of operations at Mt. Bardoom. I also wanted to introduce the threat they would face in the second trilogy, but it would operate mostly in the background. In a familiar vein, Terek's plans would progress and he would get perilously close to achieving total domination. But in a final desparate battle, he would be killed and his plans undone. The world would be free from his control. You can stop reading there if you like.
That brings me to volume four and the start of the second trilogy. As introduced in the first trilogy, death isn't always final. And so it should be no surprise when its revealed that Terek is still alive, sort of. In order to fully reclaim his life he needs to take a gamble. This pits him against an even greater and older evil. And so this trilogy digs deeper into Verdan's past and reveals more about the gods (or demigods) that rule over Verdan and how much of what has happened is by their design. Terek may be the only one who partially understands this and tries to alter Verdan's destiny. The second trilogy is less about a journey and an epic confrontation than it is about political maneuvering.
The fourth book was also intended to take Celecia and Dakoran's journey to the next step. They marry early in the book and take a honeymoon (I often refer to it as "the honeymoon from hell"). We also learn what has happened to the other characters that survived the first trilogy and I begin to weave another story that takes each of them on their own journey. Some minor characters in the first trilogy play a bigger role this time around (Aelgyd, Rayne and TeLin come to mind). And then of course there is Adara. We learn her tragic story and set her up to be a more frightening villain than Terek. In fact Terek uses that to sway some to forgive his past crimes and enlist his aid. Some of that support comes from a very surprising source.
The fifth book picks up with the resurrections of Adara and Terek. Terek no longer has control of an army and needs to use subterfuge to regain some of his control. Adara wants nothing but destruction. This is racism at its ultimate as she seeks to wipe out all the non-human races. She is very powerful and getting more powerful as the book progresses. She kills many, but I intended to hammer home the point that her threat is real and give some idea why good intentioned people would welcome Terek's aid. In the meantime, the gods of Verdan are not happy. They have their own plans and have seen magic and Terek in particular threaten those plans. To that end, Terek, Dakoran and Celecia are threatened by most of the gods and then helped (for unknown reasons) by an unlikely pair.
The fifth book also centers around the vampires of Verdan and explains the consequences of Dakoran and Celecia's actions back in volume 2. In that book they killed the vampire lord, Balgor and created a power vacuum. The consequences of those actions are brought to Izmira and ultimately result in an unimaginable tragedy and very nearly the loss of everything. This is the only book that ends in a tantalizing cliffhanger that concludes in the opening chapter of volume 6
Volume 6 brings to a conclusion the second trilogy of the main story. Once again Celecia is tested and with the help of her husband and friends she pulls through. Adara finally acheives the level of power she has been seeking. All of the heroes finally gather in New Syton and once again head to Mt. Bardoom. This volume has not one epic battle at the end, but three. First, I need to show Adara at the height of her power. She faces a legendary group of heroes and kills all of them (with one exception). Flush with victory she seeks to destroy the elves of Seahaven and the dragon queen, Phaedra. It is a battle she comes close to winning, but an alliance between Terek and Celecia turns the tide and she meets her end.
But then it is Terek who betrays the alliance and takes Adara's power for his own. He discovers one of the god's secrets and also seeks to harness the power of an unstoppable army. This time it takes the combined effort of all Verdan's heroes to bring his ambitions to an end. More losses are suffered, but once again it is Celecia and Dakoran at the center of bringing him down. He is apparantly destroyed and the world appears to have found the elusive peace it was promised. I seek to tie up all of the character loose ends at the end of this trilogy. Feel free to stop reading here if you wish. The only hint that the story isn't done is the smile of a god. The god's plans have suffered a setback, but they are not over.
As always intended, the third trilogy leaves behind the mideaval type world of Verdan. Celecia is abducted by a god and sent 2000 years into Verdan's future. Now the book becomes almost more of an urban fantasy. It's like taking Merlin or Gandalf or some other legendary wizard and dropping them into our world (or a world that closely resembles ours). I know, there have been some movies that attempted this premise, but none of them ever satisfied me. Going forward, there is a science fiction aspect to the series that runs parallel to the fantasy. I also wanted Celecia's character to be grounded with some ordinary problems. And thus I drop her into the laps of some ordinary college students.
Volume 7 is about Celecia learning about Verdan's future. She discovers that an evil from her time has also landed in the future and at first believes that is why she was taken, to face and stop her nemesis, Terek. But Terek landed in the future ten years earlier. He has become president of a small country. Using magic and technology he seeks to raise the power and influence of this country (while not originally intended this way, you can think of it a little like North Korea). But this book is very much intended to be about magic versus science.
I also introduce a large number of new characters. There are seven characters from 2000 years ago that are still alive, each has their own unique story. There is a gathering of new wizards, each with a spell that comes natural to them. You can draw some comparisons to X-men and mutants if you wish. It was not completely unintentional. There is also a bit of a spy thriller element to this book as the story navigates between the politics of various countries. There are parallels you may note to several countries in our world, most notably you can consider Chenoa to be a surrogate for the United States. If you want to see how magic fares against modern technology, you will find this book interesting.
Once again, volume 8 will find a lot of loose ends being tied up. You learn that vampires have survived Verdan's past. They were stripped of much of their power, but that weakness has ended. You can almost read volumes 2, 5 and 8 as a vampire trilogy of their own. It ends here. Terrorism is front and center in this volume and the terrorist strike orchestrated in the book is much worse than 911. Once again Terek and Celecia need to form an alliance to defeat the immediate threat of the vampires. But this time Celecia takes to heart the lessons of her past and stops Terek before he can betray her. But she doesn't kill him and he takes one last shot at vengeance. The books ends with another tragedy and Terek's final defeat.
The ninth and final volume reveals the history of the gods and their final plan for Verdan. It includes the end of the world, but in order to stop it the heroes need to discover how the world will end. Quite a bit of time is spent discussing various threats to life on Verdan. A lot of it is taken from various science programs I've watched over the years. I even did a little bit of online research for this one. This final book takes the reader to some amazing places as they race against a deadline to save the planet. But in order to safeguard Verdan's future, they will also need to face down the gods. Of course, I generally believe in a happy ending. More loss is suffered along the way, but in the end the heroes will prevail, the gods will back down and the planet is saved. When we leave Verdan, it will be in a happy place. All is well. Or is it?
While the nine books published represent the story I laid out over thirty years ago, I learned to love the playground I created and the characters that lived in it. And so a new story was born. But this one is grounded by two things. First, how would a world like ours react to the events of the past nine books. Second, what is new in our world and how would Verdan react if faced with similar threats. These are the things I'm currenlty exploring. Once again, it is planned as a fourth trilogy (I guess I get my 12 books anyway). But without spoiling the end this time, the ending may not be as happy as the first three trilogies. And that sort of reflects how I view the world today. But as always, you can count on Celecia to be a beacon of hope.
And that's what i'm thinking about these days. That's the story. It's everything I wanted it to be (setting aside the occasional cringe from writing skill inadequacies). I do hope more of you decide to make this journey. If you like fantasy or sci fi, I think you will enjoy it. In the meantime, thanks for taking the time to read this.
Dave
March 6 Update - Made it through V1 Ch20 and no cringing for several chapters. I'm reminded of some of cool moments when things come to me and just fit the story perfectly. The House of Menkelin is an example of something I created as a notion of this living house. In a later book I was looking to complete the history of the Dewnor Stones and where they are today and the House fit perfectly into the story. It wasn't planned, but just fell into place. I also created this race of telepathic horses known as the Equineans. When it came time to give a backstory to Y'Sha's loyal horse, it just fell into place to tie it to the Equineans. Those are examples of smaller but significant moments when the story surprises me and puzzle pieces I didn't even know existed fit perfectly into the overall picture. Hopefully, other readers will appreciate them as well.