State of the Realm 2013, Part One

Greetings to everyone, and welcome to State of the Realm 2013. I am grateful for everyone who is reading this address. This is the first new address I’ve furnished which has been released firstly via a method other than face-to-face discussion, or delayed reading by a typed document. I will get into that more in a moment.

The Realm has remained a strong focus of the leisurely pursuits I’ve engaged in over the last year. Progress has been fraught with the challenges of writing from the skill of an amateur and the pressures of real-world commitments that would limit any pastime.

The early part of the year 2013 was dedicated almost purely towards writing of the various stories under the Book of the Shadows banner. Initially my efforts were focused exclusively on the First Moon Saga, my original series. I was still looking to regain the sort of burst of inspiration and effectiveness of the prior year. That proved to be mostly futile, however. I was able to complete a couple chapters in the beginning of the year, in early January and February. However, the issue I was concerned about in last year’s address did indeed come to pass.

As I noted over the last couple years of reports I already knew where the First Moon Saga would go in the original Book of the Shadows. I have known the broad strokes of what the next story arcs would be and where the story would end before moving on to the next third of First Moon, Advancing Shadows. The issue has always been writing my way there. With Books V and VI underway, I could see the ending of the arc, and timing became an issue. To match the structural pacing of the story – the firm rubric of 13 chapters per book – produced a situation in which at the rate I was going I would end up going over into an extra book by several chapters. I was too much to easily condense into another book, and too little to easily add more to fill out another full book. I had considered splitting up or combining other chapters.

All of this demands a little more attentiveness towards how each chapter is written, and that is reflected in chapters 87 and 88. Furthermore I went back and tweaked a number of chapters in both Book VII and Book VI to make sure elements that set up future events are included. Working on chapter 89 I have hit a roadblock. I had not been able to reconcile what my original intent was for this part of the story, what I needed to happen, and how to accomplish it in the time I needed it to be completed. Though I did manage to overcome the contention between the original intent and the other two factors, I have been unable plot exactly how the subsequent chapter will play out. After much thought and testing out a few possibilities I think I am closing in on a path forward. Hopefully I will be able to find that path and move down it relatively early this year. Once that is done it should be a relatively easy to traverse the remaining story for the first third of the First Moon Saga.

Much of my writings this year have been in the other stories beyond First Moon. The line share has been with Cromwell Universe. This is the story that deals with the alternate universe that follows Drusilla Arenzai’s journey through space with her beau, Yugi, as she seeks to negotiate her way to complete universal dominance. The story was originally going to be fairly small just to explore this alternate reality; six or seven chapters max. But I found myself enjoying it so much that it has ballooned a little bit. Now it will easily hit around 20 chapters and has helped me develop ideas for the other books as well. Once I get a little more of the formal writing done I will get the chapters up.

A new side story also got some work. Called Spirit Files, this story is thematically similar to something like Ga-Rei or Claymore, and does borrow some of their broader concepts. The main character is a girl and her cousin who come from a several generations long line of “Purifiers”, people who hunt and kill (purify) corrupt spirits. These two, however, are hunting a spirit that killed their families one night a couple years earlier. Along the way they discover that the world they thought they knew is much different, with the organization they work for hiding many things from them, possibly even the real location of the one spirit they most want revenge against.

I like Spirit Files mostly because the main characters are different from most I’ve written. Similar to the Cult of Athena story I started in 2012, and to a lesser extent Euphiemia in the First Sun Saga, they are less the clean-cut heroes I tend to write and more angry revenge seekers. I don’t push them to be the type who save everyone, and their power and ability is pared down than most of my heroes such that they can still put up a good fight, but not so much so that they easily win by brute force. This story should help me develop battles that are more intricately about strategy, not just matching force on force.

Third Moon Saga has been my other main draw. Third Moon, similar to Cromwell Universe, started out fairly modestly. Third Moon, however, was always intended to grow into something bigger, as it is a main saga, not a side story. It has reached three arcs now. Although I don’t know entirely how the story ends, I am close to that point. It is a very different sort of story for me as there is no revival, time jumps are minimal, and ultimately the ending is promised to be rather dark. Not a lot of hope will come out of this one. I haven’t done a lot in terms of visual character designs for this one, although I do have some good ideas I hope to work with.

Overall I did manage to start compiling chapters, and there are a few dozen story fragments spread across the three arcs. Because the writing style is a little different for me, it will take a little while longer before I’m fully comfortable in it. By making the lead character both stoic and antagonistic I have forced myself to be a little more descriptive, which should make for better story telling.