Tooling Along

It's supposed to be a vent day, but I can have those whenever I want, so I'll forgo at the moment.

Instead, I'll report that I am around half-way through my current edit of Swords of Fire: Prophecies of Madatar. I'm not dumping many words (only about 3,400 after nearly 100,000 read) but I am enjoying the story. It's a fun read. The contrast to Book I is significant. Whereas Book I (Traitor) dealt with treason, mystery, politics, illicit behavior, Book II is a quest story dealing with time lines, delays, and a collection of new and energetic characters.


When I originally began the Swords of Fire Saga it was well past the stories which I am working on now. It was "The White King of Ladondo," and it was a quest story. However, as I developed a backstory for some of the characters I found there was an even better starting point than the one I chose, and I shifted gears into the past.

My first effort there was The Prophecies of Madatar, which encompassed both Book I and Book II. But the story kept growing on me. There was so much to be said. I tried to contain it, but it kept exploding on me. Eventually I realized what I had was two stories, and so I broke off the first third of the book and made it its own story.

Of course, things really began to get out of hand after that. I expanded my backstory and soon was writing twice as much about that as I was for the actual stories meant for publication. Since last fall I have left off the backstory and concentrated solely on Books I and II (as regards the Swords of Fire Saga). There is still a lot more work I want to get done regarding backstory. For instance, I want to go through all 352 years of family history and determine who was in the military each year and at what rank. Included with this is the personal "job" history of all 6,700+ family members. Lots of work. Lots. Lots. Lots.

I would also like to return to my efforts at developing the common language, which is used across The Great Sea. Separation means there are thousands of dialects, but the basic language is the same. Developing a language makes the other work seem like child's play. Kind of like comparing a seven course meal with a bowl of cereal with bananas on top.

But Prophecies of Madatar is going well. Of course, with so few words taken out I am going to have to go through it a second time to reduce the words spent describing an event, or removing the event entirely. Don't look forward to that. But here is a copy of the chart showing my progress. It's going well. It's a fun read.