So at long, long last I am writing on my blog. 2014 has been an interesting year for me. I have published the first four books of my Legends of Arria series, which are the new, updated versions of The Knights of Arria 2002.
I attempted to use Kindle Scout, Amazon's new crowd-sourcing publishing program, to get some attention for The Lion and the Kirna 2002. I didn't get selected there, but it was an interesting experiment and I do intend to try that Kindle Scout program again sometime soon, depending on how quickly/soon I complete either The Kirna's Apprentice 2002 or the 5th volume in the Legends of Arria series.
I had an idea for the 5th Volume's title, but now I'm starting to worry if it might be too similar to another writer's title. I may work on that later. I currently have about 140 pages worth of material there, although who knows for certain. I have less of a framework for this book as I did for previous volumes, especially as I am going 'off-grid' in regards to what happened in the 2002 scheme of things. I have plenty of notes and ideas for what I want to do or where the story might go, but materializing that within the novel could be a different story.
I had intended with the 2002 version of the series to stick with what I had written, for the most part, in the past, although I have admittedly veered off from that. The Knights of Arria 2002 is pretty much straight-forwardly what I had written then with some polish. But when it came to The Lion and the Kirna, I deleted some 10 pages of material near the beginning because it was redundant, added nothing to the story, and might have been embarrassing. I polished other bits here and there, streamlined some description, but I deleted some dialogue with the falcons because it went on a bit too much.
One thing that was really interesting was at some point when I was originally writing The Lion and the Kirna, I had forgotten that a character named Witta was a griffin. So somewhere between Shama's arrival in Coe Kiki and what happened in the park, I forgot Witta was a griffin and wrote him as human near the end of the book. So I had to change some scenes and write out Witta.
Plus I changed some of what happened on the bank of the Tau River near the end. Now when it comes to The Kirna's Apprentice 2002, I am doing a drastic change close to the beginning, in regards to a character showing off their magical powers much sooner and more dramatically than they had done before. All because I felt...well, I might explain that later, sometime.
Now here is a toast to 2015, huzzah, huzzah, may it bring us all new challenges and opportunities to fulfill. Salute.
