…I know. Be still my beating heart.
You may have noticed a few updates on the sidebar over there. Well, yeah, I finally got around to adding my Twitter feed here since I’ve actually started updating it a bit more than once-per-year. I decided that if a US Congressman can tweet pictures of his package without consequence, certainly I could Tweet about things I’m working on without getting into too much trouble.
Also, this is going to upset all five of you who were following it, but The Unexiled is shelved again. Sadly, as much as I want to work on it and finish it, I find myself having to force it too much. The concept itself is good — solid, in fact. The characters are complex and well-thought-out. However, I just don’t think I have the skills or discipline as a novelist to pull off all that I’m trying to do in that series. So, I’m putting it on hold for now (but I will not be restarting it entirely. Just setting it aside until my skills can match my ambition) and have instead started cranking out a new novel that is ridiculously easy to write.
Twilight of Lanar’ya is based extremely loosely off a campaign setting I designed and ran for my D&D group in college. By “loosely” I mean there are two organizations that are named the same thing but work in completely different manners and there’s one character from the campaign who has the same name and appearance but does different things for completely different reasons than he did in the campaign. The four other people who ran through it with me will not recognize it. I’m only naming it the same thing because the arcs are somewhat similar (while being entirely different…other writers will know what I mean) and because I like the name. I invented the name so I figure I get to use it if I want to.
I just started writing it about two and a half weeks ago and the thing has flowed like silk. I don’t have to force anything with it. I barely had to outline it at all. Just a few simple notes, a couple of references to keep my setting consistent, a map of South America since I absolutely suck at maps, and it was off to the races.
I’m hoping that once I finish this three-parter, I’ll have developed the skills and discipline I’d need as a novelist to pull off The Unexiled. I finally realized that Robert Jordan did not sit down to write The Wheel of Time as his first series. Sure, he’d had the idea for a while, but he held off committing to it until he knew he could give it the skill it needed. I have to admit that while I am an okay writer, I’m nowhere near good enough to accomplish my goals with The Unexiled just yet so I’m setting it aside until I can give it the skill it deserves.
Well, with that said, back to work! Oh — and I’m still looking for a job. If anyone knows a place that is looking for a highly-skilled web designer with extensive familiarity with web scripting, programming, and CMSes ranging from vB Publishing Suite to WordPress, Blogger, Joomla!, and phpWebSite who is also decent to adept at graphic design and content editing and they’re willing to pay at least $45k per year, feel free to point me to them!
