Traveller's Tales

Good things happening in my writing world.

Old: In a well-worn notebook I’d hidden in one of the Myriad Boxes I Have Not Unpacked From My Move, Way Back In February*, I discovered a seriously huge number of notes regarding worldbuilding and forward series thinking.  The best part of this isn’t the recovered notes, which alone will be lovely to re-assimilate (and will contribute copiously to the Codex Vocrotha in the weeks to come), but in fact a long-lost character interview with none other than my very favorite arch-nemesis, the Warlord, Paldor Daln.  Expect to see him as exposed and self-referential as you’ll ever see him, in a post very soon.

New: a scene rewrite, for The Grey Knight.  Yeah, I know, I’m supposed to be done with this one, and normally I won’t “optimize” a scene, but this just gives me so much more bang for the page space that it has to be done.

Also new: movement in the agent category.  Nothing definite at the moment but forward momentum is always positive; when I have actual news I’ll report it.

*I’m not actually averse to unpacking, it’s the Finding A Place For The Things Which You Have Just Unpacked process that’s tricksy.

I’m going a little crazy with the Codex at the moment; apologies for the one-sided focus, but I’ve been having troubles with my laptop (again) and I want to make sure all of the ancient information I still have on there gets on the server before the damned drive defecates on the linens again. Though I know it’s not as cool as new chapters in the novel, it’s really getting me stoked; the logical brain loves the connections between events, and the creative mind loves probing the events themselves, so it’s all part of revving up the engine to get back up to speed.

Today, we have new entries on the Golden Reign of the Kâlindur, on the tree city of Highbranch, home of the Solindriel, and, lastly, an entry on the Vasriel themselves — the progenitor race of both Solindriel and Tenebriel — who ceased to exist as a race during their exile in the Adaric Archipelagos.

Starting to think I’m almost ready to get back into the book. Heave! Ho!

Okay, so it’s not exactly writing for the novel, per se, but it is important writing work that I’ve been putting off, and it’s all part of my master plan to get myself properly back into the swing of things. The Codex Vocrotha, you may or may not know, is my work-in-progress repository for backstory, historical information and bizarre trivia relating to my stories. Worldbuilding for me isn’t just helpful, it’s as utterly necessary as the stories I write, the characters who take part in them and the ridiculous levels of research I do to make sure real-life details don’t break the fiction due to my own negligence. An example: if I put in a magical suspension bridge, then I had damned well better know how suspension bridges are supposed to work in real life, at least in a general sense, so when I describe a bridge, a real-life engineer reading my book doesn’t say “Oh for crying out lout, that’d never work!’ but instead says, “Huh, that’s kinda neat, that material would have to have incredible tensile strength, but imagine what you could do with it!” Well, that sort of detail carries over into backstory with me — thus, the Codex.

Anyway, I know, ultimately, that I’m writing fiction, but internal consistency is incredibly important, and setting down the details for the histories, the characters that have come before, the special magics and all that other wild stuff is as important to me as telling the stories that use those details as their foundations. So in that spirit, from the brand-spanking new entries from the Codex, I present the Nightmare Imperium and the Maltharian Kingdom. Both of these feature in The Grey Knight, if historically (in the first case), so they are absolutely relevant to the current stories, but if you start following links I can’t promise you won’t end up somewhere utterly bizarre, thinking to yourself “Where the hell is THAT in the book?” Not only is it possible that I may not know, but there may not actually even be an answer, ever. Yeah, it’s like that.

(And yeah, it looks like a basic uncustomized wiki. Sorry ’bout that. I really don’t have time to customize it myself just now. Maybe soon.)

The letter is written; I’ve reviewed it with someone in the field who knows what a good one looks like, and it has passed muster with one edit. I’ve got a short list of target agents I’m taking aim at first, based on that same friend’s feedback, and now it’s time to fire them off and wait.

Now taking aim at Agent A: letter is printed out, lacking only blank envelopes to send the letter with. Based on the agency writeup, I expect to hear a response in 2-3 weeks, and I’ll post the result here. In fact, I’ll probably make up a new blog category just for those status updates, assuming the process is as long and arduous as it’s usually described — but hey, maybe I’ll get lucky.

Update to the Codex: five new entries and a new category for them — Magic.

I’ve decided to post a new entry to the Codex Vocrotha daily, even if it kills me. It’s not exactly Step Four, but it’s part of the plan.

Today you can learn more about Mureia, the village that gave birth to the Warlord.