Kenn Ghannon: Blog

I've completed 'Runesward: Tome 1, Hasp'. It resolves a few things on my 'To Do' list for the story while opening a few others. Honestly, I think it is pretty good.

I'm going to do a variant of the 'Crowd Source Editing' with the rest of the story. I've requested two experienced editors to look over the rest of the story and mark it up. Anything the three of us don't catch will still be crowd-sourced.

I'm writing at least a bit in Tome 2 - just some ideas I want to get out while I'm thinking about them. I'm not sure if I will continue the story immediately or move on to 'Rings of Command' or 'Fairly CAPable'. Those are the 'Big 3' in my queue at the moment. On the one hand, I'm enjoying this world that's in my head. On the other, I've been writing in it for over six weeks now - which is a bit of a record for me. I want to keep the story 'fresh' for me so we'll see what happens.

Thanks to all who have helped make this story better. I appreciate all you've done.

I hope everyone will forgive my writing two blog posts in a single day. I was going to include this in the previous post but it didn't seem appropriate.

'Runesward' is doing well - better, honestly, than I expected. I'm more than humbled, honestly. When I came up with it, I honestly never thought it was good enough to upload. I mean, there are some really, really great SFF stories - my favorite genre - on SOL, stories such as 'The Black Rabbit' (a shameless plug, since I'm helping to edit it - you'd think editing someone else's story would make me better at editing my own but, obviously, that isn't the case), 'A Love For The Ages', 'Law of the Blood', 'The Rise of Azkoval', 'Always on Guard', just about everything from 'AStrangeGeek' and 'TechnicDragon' and so many others I'm missing. How could I compete with those?

However, I had - and am having - genuine fun writing the story. Plus, I was able to do something I've not accomplished in a long time - I was able to maintain concentration on this story and these characters for over a month. Usually, I might get a week in before I become bored - or, in some cases, overwhelmed - and move on to another story. I've been writing 'Runesward' now since early December 2018 - and I'm still having fun. I'm not certain what has changed.

So, since I was having fun writing it, I decided to share it. I'm glad I did. It has, so far, gotten positive attention from a very fun, very vocal group. There have been some negative comments - a few - but I've never minded people being critical of my writing. Even the e-mails that say "This is shit!"; my words, my made-up story, was able to evoke a response from someone even if they hated it. By far, most of the comments have been positive. I love it either way.

I think, honestly, by far the best feedback I've received is from the speculation of what is coming. It means I've done something right because people are invested in the characters and story enough to speculate on who they are, where they're coming from, and what they're going to do next. I feel proud of that - and I only hope I can continue to meet or exceed everyone's expectations.

Finally, I have to thank EVERYONE who has written to me with typos, errors in verb tense, sentence structure and all the myriad little details that I screwed up and others caught. This story would not be half as good without your contributions.

I'd like to take a moment and say 'Farewell and God Speed' to Xalir. I didn't think it was appropriate to write about him immediately; I felt it was better to leave that to people who were close to him. I honestly didn't know him and, as far as I know, I've never written to him. I have, however, read all of his stories (with the exception of the 'My Journey' series) - starting with 'Trading Up' which, honestly, was pretty much a masterpiece to which I was hoping to get a sequel. The SOL community is much darker without his bright light.

One of the reasons I've stopped posting stories before they are complete is because I often find, after I've written a part/scene/chapter/etc., a new perspective for it jumps out at me - a way to make it better, to make all of the bits and pieces I've thrown onto paper make more sense. Occasionally, it's just the turn of a word or a change of a phrase - I usually catch those in my pre-upload re-read ritual. Sometimes, though, it's a way to promote better understanding of what the characters are doing - or even to tighten a few of the different threads of a story together.

I found myself doing that overnight in those moments before, after or between sleep; honestly, it's when I do my best work for some reason. As I mentioned, the story is finished - I even finished Chapter 24 yesterday. It is complete - not postable, I still have to 'prettify' it (add descriptions where I missed them on the first few passes, add character emotion and motivation in areas where I didn't convey them properly), but it is intrinsically finished. However, last night I found a way to change Chapter 29 to make it better - and a little longer but I don't really care about length. The same with a few items in Chapter - oh, I don't know, I'll have to look up the chapters. Thankfully, it had a tie into chapter 14, which I haven't posted yet.

Anyway, I think in the future I might actually go a bit further afield and wait as much as a week or two after the story is finished before posting; kind of let my mind percolate on it a bit and make sure there's no part of the story I can 'make better'. I made the edits to chapter 14 early this morning (I couldn't wait) and am going to re-work some pieces of later chapters today or tomorrow.

In the meantime, Chapter 14 is queued. I hope you enjoy it - and it answers some of the questions I've been getting about 'the fourteen swords'. :)

I won't be around much Wednesday, so I stayed up late to make sure Chapter 13 was in the queue awaiting posting; I have it delayed to release into the queue at 0800 and, depending on how busy the queue is and the reviewers are, it may take a bit before it actually gets released.

In other news, I was also up late because I was writing. I managed to pull Yren out of the corner I boxed him in and also write a ton more. In fact, I finished the story - sort of. After a quick review, I realized I was missing something which I need to give the story clarity - so, after writing 28 chapters, I had to go back and insert a new one after Chapter 23; it's getting late and I have a ton of things to do tomorrow, so I didn't get a chance to finish the new Chapter 24 but it's about half finished.

As usual, the story needs to be 'prettified' and fleshed in in a ton of places - but it's pretty good as it is and I think adding color will make it much better. I've also sketched out some of the story arcs that will go through the second story and, if I don't resolve them all, into the third story - I'm thinking long term here.

Anyway, have a great Wednesday and I hope you enjoy Chapter 13.