The Notebook

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Two in a Row

Hey, we’re not doing too bad if I managed to keep up two newsletter in a row. Woo hoo! I did get a small chastisement for the last one. Apparently it sounded cynical and demeaning, as if I were disinterested in my own work and disrespectful of my audience. I’m not disinterested in my own work. The problem is that I create too much of it for myself, kind of like how one series turned into multiple series. And that’s not even considering all the other work I’ve been doing. As for disrespecting the audience, that was not my intent, although I don’t control how people perceive what I write. I am guaranteed to offend someone at some point, so…screw it. I’ll be me and people can be offended if they want, if they have nothing better to do that day.

 

Old Business

Eh, why not, let’s keep going with the secretarial minutes.

In Old Business, I am going through Turning Point (The Chivalrous Welshman #9) and getting it ready for a July release. As I mentioned last time, I had an epiphany while writing The Hand Holding the Knife (The Hands of Time #3/F) about how to strengthen Turning Point. These changes would not only tie it in better to TCW and THoT, but it would help smooth over some of the more abrupt tone shift. Synchronization was most certainly a high point in the overarching plot. Very tense, very dramatic, very high stakes. Meanwhile, Turning Point was, comparatively, extremely low-stakes. It had a bit of a withdrawal effect.

 

And that’s okay, in a sense. It might have provided a little perspective for the reader on some of the events. Unfortunately, it left too many loose ends unresolved in any satisfying way. Changing the last five books of TCW into a new series of The Fifth Horseman would definitely resolve a fair amount of that, but if I could keep that momentum going from The Hand Holding the Knife, through Turning Point and The Eleventh Hour and feed it into The Fifth Horseman, then it could only make things better and tie them together much more strongly.

 

But that also meant rewriting a few chapters from scratch in Turning Point. A bit annoying, but also a little sad. I’m thinking that I might put the original chapters up on The Timekeeper Chronicles website (you know, that place that doesn’t see a lot of love?) for you to read for your own amusement, just to see what some of the original ideas were.

 

The chapter that I’m working on now* was originally one where Tommen contacts Mi Chin, the Gatekeeper for Earth, and travels to China to discuss the shield generators protecting Earth. Originally, there was going to be a minor plot bit about the Tacagans and Earthlings having something like an AI race. The Earthlings are trying to outwit the Tacagan AI without shutting down the shields and opening themselves up to invasion from the Borelians, and the Tacagans are, obviously, trying to stop such a thing. So Tommen goes to Mi Chin to warn her of such nefarious things and other evil miscellany.

 

It’s not a bad chapter. A bit long as Tommen takes in Beijing for the first time and all the sights and sounds and people, but still not an impossible development (and part of this concept is saved in the revised version). Unfortunately, it is a tad out of place. Yes, Tommen is impulsive and he is acutely aware that a lot of things are his fault and he should try to fix them. Except he has basically been shunned by every faction out there. No one likes him and no one wants his help. And he doesn’t even have the knowledge or expertise concerning the shields to appeal to in order to shoehorn him in.

 

The point itself is also only vaguely referenced ever again, making the entire trip to Beijing and meeting with Mi Chin ultimately useless. Again, no one wants Tommen’s help and there are other things going on that demand his attention. Regrettably, this chapter had to go.

 

The replacement is much more cohesive, much more believable, and much more in line with things that have already been happening in Imminence and Synchronization, but without detracting from the larger plot of this particular book. It will also be easier to carry over into The Eleventh Hour when I get to that point.

 

New Business

Meanwhile, work is still progressing on Bearer of Bad News (The Akari-Bearer #1). Knowing that these are going to be shorter, lighter books makes it a lot easier to bear (pardon the pun), and I think that is kind of what is motivating me to write as much as I am.

See, The Chivalrous Welshman, on the whole, was finished several years ago. Even The Lone Wolf was pretty well done by the time Wolf Pack (The Lone Wolf #1) was released. I don’t think it was until The Hand Holding the Knife where I was really crafting the book start to finish after releasing the previous book. So The Akari-Bearer is pretty darn fresh, compared to other books and series.

 

The series is also pretty straightforward. There isn’t a lot of intrigue and plot twists and everything else. There is drama and there is violence and battle and everything else. If you’ve read The Chivalrous Welshman (or The Hands Pulling the Strings or Chasing the White Bear), you can glean some of the events you might read about in more detail from the twins’ point of view, things like St. Joseph’s Industrial School for Boys in Leitir Fraic, Ireland; migration to Canada during World War II; meeting Aklaq White Bear and suffering under her tutelage for a while; and Micaiah’s Time Trial.

 

Fun Factoid

Although there were always five canon books in The Akari-Bearer, for a while I considered adding a sixth. This sixth book would encompass and explain events between Imminence and a future Chivalrous Welshman Part 2 book. This book was ultimately scrapped because of how out of place it was with the Akari-Bearer series and The Timekeeper Chronicles overall. There was just no good way to work it in, especially considering the gap between the last Akari-Bearer and the events of Time to Kill, never mind Imminence.

 

If you’ve read Imminence, then, you can probably take a guess on a few things, a few little clues that were laid out, some of them quite obviously. But, once again, there was no good way to make it all work together coherently with the rest of the series. And, since I reworked TCW Part 2 into The Fifth Horseman, I don’t know how that would all tie in. Actually, I do, and it would be a surprisingly easier tie, but it still wouldn’t mesh with the rest of the series, and I want each series to be self-contained. Jumping thirty years or so into the future and then skipping chunks of time, it just doesn’t sit right with me or the series.

 

Other News

Well, compared to where we were living (not counting West Virginia), we’re definitely having to learn a lot about this new place, new land. The thing about Michigan is that the soil is very sandy and very dry because all the water is constantly getting sucked into the many lakes and rivers. Except, we are now close enough to a lake that our land is very squishy after each rain and it takes several days (not hours) to dry out.

 

We’re also close enough to Lake Michigan now that we kind of get the peel off the winds, which kind of sucks. It dries out the land a lot faster, true, but say goodbye to air temperature.

 

Squishy ground is making it difficult to put up a barn, and wind is making it difficult to get plants out. Even on sunny days, it can be brutal. With clearing trees and land prep and everything else, I don’t have the luxury of a permanent garden spot right now, so protection for my plants is...creative. Sometimes creatively inside as we get spring frost and snow.

 

Apparently this is what the kids call “adulting.”