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Today I wrapped up Tome 2 of Runesward. I'll be honest in that it didn't end quite where I wanted it to end - but it seemed a logical conclusion to this section of story. Tome 1 was about the journey to Hasp and all the different paths that lead there. Tome 2 was all about the journey to Callisto and some of those paths converging. Tome 3, to my mind, is the journey to the Elven city Muir'tiat'amorellen and a more in depth understanding of exactly who/what Yren really is - and where the gods, D'agowyn, Elves, Dwarves (oops! Spoilers!) and so on fit in. It will also begin to bring us face to face with what the Church of Tyln is. I can say no more without giving away some important clues - and half my fun is reading the theories the readers put together about what is really going on. Luckily, no one has figured it out yet - though some have come close.
In the meantime, I'm working on InCAPable. I had the story for the end of Calix's trilogy worked out in advance two or more years ago. Real Life™ just got too busy and I lost the path to writing for a bit (stupid Covid). Now, re-reading the notes I'd put together... I'm not happy with it. It doesn't advance Calix as a character... it's just more of the same. So, I'm in the middle of changing things and moving back to what Fairly CAPable was all about, at least to my mind. I'm partway through the new first chapter - even without completing my storyline notes - and I'm fairly enthused about it. It feels much better. As always, the ending is already 'written' (at least in my head) so I'm just trying to get from NOW to THEN.
I have a tendency of writing myself into a corner... frequently. Then, I have to take a few days to a few weeks off while I let the idea percolate in my head and try to figure a way out of it. This time, I'm going to try to do something different. When I write myself into a corner, I'm going to try changing stories.
While I considered a new, more poignant way to get Calix from NOW to THEN, I started on Runesward Tome 3. However, while I'm rather happy with Chapter 75 (it needs some tweaking yet), I hate what I did in Chapter 76 (it reads like an instruction manual - ugh!). While I'm trying to figure out a different approach in Runesward, I've started a new story I hope to finish tentatively titled From the Dead. I'm going to kind of round-robin these three, moving from one to the other as I get stuck or the mood hits me. The three are different enough, I think I can write the different points of view without overlap... if I can't, I'll go back to concentrating on one or the other.
Next, though, I need to begin reposting all of the chapters with all of the changes my crowd-source editors found. I will apologize in advance, but I've lost SOME/MANY edits people have made. I'll try to credit where I can, but if I don't list you it's not because I'm snubbing you but I've legitimately lost what you helped me with. I sincerely apologize.
Finally, I'm working on bringing some of my work to Bookapy. I have some stuff to do (my completely unartistic butt somehow needs to come up with covers!) but I hope to have some of them posted in the coming few months.
Thanks for reading!
Kenn Ghannon
Crowd-sourced editing worked very well for the first two Tomes. Thanks to my readers, my mish-mash of random words actually reads something like a story so I'm eternally grateful to them.
Unfortunately, the constant posting and updates for the changes and crowd-sourced bits was something that was difficult to implement and keep track of. Basically, it entailed a great deal of work. So, I didn't update Tome 2 at all - though I will start posting the updates soon.
What got lost, unfortunately, was who did what. This wasn't because I wanted to forget but rather because I didn't have a workable system until recently.
Unlike Tome 1, I didn't want to actually add to the end of every chapter in the master manuscript. It made going through the manuscript very difficult. It wasn't until recently (maybe chapter 60 or so) where I started adding them as comments to the master manuscript (before, I was keeping them inside the email box to go over afterwards - but I've found that is unworkable). As a result, I have not saved the changes made by my crowd-sourced editors for Tome 2 except for the last 10-15 chapters or so. So, I'm not going to include crowd-sourced edits in the final Tome 2. I only hope that my thankful email to everyone who has contributed will be enough thanks and recognition.
Moving forward, I will use the comment system to keep track of issues and problems found by the wonderful people who read my work. At the end of Tome 3, I will publish all of these corrections with attribution.
Thank you for your patience and understanding.
A number of you have inquired, over the years, about whether or not I was going to continue 'Ring of Command'. The issue was always that RoC contained sexual relations between underage characters (the youngest was 12, I believe). I was not opposed to continuing the story, but I wasn't sure whether I could, considering the rule that sexual relations had to be age 14 and up. I asked Lazeez for some confirmation about how to proceed. He indicated that there was a 'grandfather' clause for stories posted in 2011 or prior... but RoC came after that. He had received no complaints about it and was happy to leave it up but...
I'm not stupid enough to think children have a 'certain age' where sex becomes 'okay'. As a father of a few daughters, I sincerely hope my children wait until they are ready at age 30 (or I die, whichever comes first), but I know that's unrealistic. If my kids were ready at age 12 to take that step, I'd like to think I'd be disappointed but supportive. I just thank God I never had to deal with that (all my kids are older now).
However, the law is the law - and I don't want to chance being locked up or causing trouble for Lazeez, so I've requested that RoC be removed. I have a copy of it locally and, when I have the time and inclination, I'll 'age adjust' certain characters to make this legally compliant to whatever laws are in place when I publish it.
I know this will be a blow to some of you - but it is the right thing to do.
'Runesward, Tome 2' is complete. Well, primary writing is done. I have to re-read, proofread and repair the last few chapters, but the primary writing is at last done.
Without those corrections and changes I'll make re-reading the last few chapters, Runesward Tome 2 came in at 45 chapters, ~563 pages (in MS Word) and 207,370 words. Sadly, I'm eager to continue onto Tome 3... but I have 'InCAPable' to write, and I need a bit of a break. I know how Tome 3 is going to start, I know WHERE it's going to finish but there's a ton of story between the two I need to flesh out.
The good news is, readers of Tome 2 have about 7 more weeks of content. The bad news is I have 7 weeks to make some kind of good progress on 'InCAPable' - because I would consider it a feather in my cap if I could start posting that story immediately after finishing this one. (Hint: Don't hold your breath.)
As a gift today, I’ve posted an extra chapter. It’s not much, but in today’s economy, I give what I can afford.
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