Progress -- Beacon & Palaios

I nearly finished Beacon Burning back in March, but I just haven't been able to get going again. My mom's condition continues to deteriorate and being a sole caregiver is a 24-7-365 job.

I have done a little bit of work on Palaios, which is my pre-Casanarvan world, the place where the Tazaqwayn came from. It is a place of many gods and goddesses and fiery blood sacrifices.

From this world a priest, Licas, escapes with a few hundred followers, including several warriors who become his bodyguards and eventually form the original Velnar Knights.

I know little of this world and am just feeling my way along. Recently I saw a picture of a city by a sea and recognized it as the capital of Palaios. I had not known before if Palaios was a coastal city or not. Details will come to me and I will be able to See this place much better in time. Eventually what I see probably won't resemble the picture at all, but that doesn't matter.

Slow progress

Life keeps getting in the way, but I'm slowly making some progress on Beacon Burning.

I was really stalled out on chapter 3. I kept trying to weave in Catreena and Saray's story, and it wasn't working. Gradually I realized that a scene I was trying to avoid writing HAD to be written. It actually wasn't hard once I got into it. I just had to change my p.o.v. character. Now I think I'm back on the right trail.

I believe a lot of what we call writer's block is a resistance that builds in our minds when we try to convince ourselves we know a shortcut or a better way around in a story, and the story itself won't let us. You can call it your muse or say your characters are controlling the story, but whatever it is, it does form an impediment to continuing the story or even continuing to write the story.

Life may conspire to block our progress, but I've found that if I REALLY want to write, I will do so in spite of whatever problems I'm facing. In fact, my writing provides a release from stress and an escape from daily disasters. Rarely do my characters experience anything like what I'm going through, yet their "trials and tribulations" often make my problems seem trivial, so that I discover a double relief--that of escaping into their world for a while and that of escaping back into my own once more!

Candles finished

I finished Candles in the Wind (topped out at 419 pages) on Aug. 29, went back and polished up the last four inserted chapters and sent them off to a couple of my critiquers.

In working on these chapters I came across a couple of things I wanted to fix in Lamp and Darkest Hour, so I'm glad they hadn't been carved in stone.

Now I'm ready to re-start Beacon Burning. I went over the first two chapters, and they look solid. My imagination is already racing ahead to scenes and dialogue for Beacon. I have quite a bit written, not as much typed in yet as I'd thought, but I'll get there.

Also I came up with a tentative title for the collaborative Adventure in Eedo. I'm calling it The New Moon. "Moon" is always good for Eedo! And I'd had that title on my list forever. That story will need a lot of work--half of it isn't even typed and some isn't canon (The wedding springs to mind immediately. I was in a hurry and based it on Catreena's two weddings!). My partner in crime has written a fresh beginning, and I'm thinking that maybe we could even start the story further back in time, but for now, it's good.

Life has been getting in the way of writing. I don't mind the work--when hands are busy, the mind often runs free and comes up with "story"--but I've got to get my mind back to focussing on the story. I've lived so long in Valtarmelsa and in Saráy that I've forgotten what Eedo and Goffeleccee are really like. Very scary. I need to re-immerse myself, not only in the geography, which is easy, but in the culture and traditions of these two kingdoms.

Candles in the Storm broken from Darkest Hour

Realizing that Darkest Hour was just too long, I decided to break it in half. From the second half I am creating a new book, which I call Candles in the Storm. Thus, Beacon Burning now becomes the fourth book in the series.

Leaving Darkest Hour was fairly easy; starting Candles has been a bit more of a trick. Re-establishing an entire world without burdening the reader (and myself) with a lot of boring backfill is not an easy task. I rejected the idea of a Reprise for Darkest Hour and didn't want to use that for Candles either. An action chapter for Saray in Ravelacca wasn't too hard, although it still isn't finished, as I suddenly realized I needed to reintroduce King Barlz's connection to the Demons of Darkness, and then was disappointed with the resulting fight scene--all of which means nothing to you if you haven't read the books, I know. Sorry about that! (Well, I'm a little bit sorry, but not very.)

The last two days, I've been working on Beacon, first to give myself a creative break from Candles and, second, because I have to be sure to have in place anything I'm going to need in Beacon.

Getting ready for NanoFeb

I've spent most of this month working on my historical novel The Coleman Massacre and rearranging some of the chapters in Darkest Hour.

Next month, our writers' group is going to do our own little NaNo, and my goal is to get back to the third book in The Casanarva Scrolls: Beacon Burning. I have several chapters written, and really want to make some progress. I think when I stopped last year, I left Lord Normavel up on the side of a mountain, and I'm sure he's not pleased with me. But now I'm eager to get back to Casanarva.

I've gotten my office organized, my email cleaned out, and most of my computer backups completed, so if life cooperates I should be able to get some "real" writing done this month. Last year my computer died, my cat got sick, and my mom had a heart attack. I'm praying for a better, quieter year this time!

Has it really been a whole year since I updated this blog? Good grief. Well, with my mom's heart attack, my Varmie Kitty getting sick and dying, and all the rest of this disastrous year, I guess I'm lucky to have gotten anything done at all.

No, I never did submit Lamp. Actually I never finished the rereading or the reprinting of the manuscript. The world just kept falling apart on me. Now, with the economy such a mess, I doubt anyone would want to publish such a long book. I'm thinking of cutting it in half and making two books out of it. Hmm. Didn't I do that before to create The Darkest Hour? I think so! :)

The Darkest Hour completed

Well, it has been nearly a year since I visited this blog, but that doesn't signify a lack of progress. I finished The Darkest Hour and started Beacon Burning. I'm still searching for an agent for A Lamp Shining in a Dark Place, which is the first book in the series, and am planning on submitting it over the transom to Daw this coming month as soon as I do yet another reread and get it printed out.

Beacon Burning will need a lot more research than Darkest Hour required, and the story has practically stopped until I can do that, for so much of the plot will depend on what I learn about high altitude living and survival. In a future book I will need to bring an army over Eedora Aylar, the Black Mountains, in winter yet, so I need to get the details worked out properly right now, lest I mess myself up later.

I'm very pleased with Darkest Hour. I think the pacing is strong, and the book introduces characters and places that will become ever more important as the series unfolds and the story moves into the Northern Kingdoms. It is important to me that the reader like my new characters and settings and yet are still able to read about the characters they have come to know and, I hope, to like.

It is a quite different book from Lamp, which is more of an adventure/romance story--a desert journey and a coming home. Dk Hr is more romance and more of an internal adventure as Catreena learns the true meaning of freedom and Saray learns the price of honor (or vice versa!) Both of them are a part of what I might call "The Romance of Catreena and Saray." And both continue the movement of the series from Darkness toward the Light.

We have only a bare glimpse of Etendil ra'n Arva and the mention of his true name in Lamp (yes, it's in there!) , but we get to meet and know him in Dk Hr. And no, I'm not going to tell you who he is. :-) Where I flip the reader's opinion about Saray in Lamp, I have enjoyed doing the same thing on a smaller scale with Yulen in Dk Hr.

I still have to do a map for Dk Hr--another project. And now that I've figured out how to access my blogs without the problems I continuously encountered last year, I will try to keep you updated on my progress. I also need to remind you that Casanarva is a fluid world, and some of the things I wrote about her early history may have to be changed as I learn more about the history and the world. Like all historical research, it is a voyage of exploration and discovery, and the "facts" are subject to change without much notice on the part of the historian and archeologist.

I hope you all had a happy Etendil ra'n Arva Day. Shar ci'n Arva, Walk in Light!