Friday, April 12, 2013
The Day Will Be Swiftly Upon Us
With only seven days left for The Enemy Within's Kickstarter, I have to be ready for the project to go anywhere. It could find success, and it might not. As I've said in the video, in either case, the book will find release. It's just a matter of when.
The point of the Kickstarter was to bring The Enemy Within to people a little sooner, and to offer up some cool rewards that aren't easy to deliver to people in smaller batches. There's no reason to despair, however, if the Kickstarter doesn't reach $2000. Barring some unforeseen personal financial crisis, I should be able to pay the editor out of pocket by the middle of July. Until then, it's locked in his possession If I were to try and get it early, he'd bite off my ankles like an angry leprechaun. Whatever the case, I'll keep you apprised of the situation through these updates.
After that, I'll be working simultaneously on the Kaos and Mathias backstories, which will be released in episodic content on the website, and on this blog. I'm still not 100% sure of the format. It may be bi-weekly, or it may be monthly. I'm trying to make sure that the Kaos prequel material is ready by the time I'm ready to publish his prequel novel, but it's hard to gauge that sort of thing. We'll see what happens, in either case.
Tuesday, April 2, 2013
On the Horizon
No matter how the Kickstarter campaign goes, I have to look to the future. Those nearest to the project with me had various talks about Tellest to that effect, yesterday.
Once The Child of the Stars Trilogy is completely released, I'm going to briefly take a moment to focus on one of the most powerful beings in the the Tellest universe. The king of the gods, Mathias, has a very interesting backstory, as you'll learn if you read The Enemy Within.
The more I thought about it, however, the less it made sense for his story to be released as a book. I'm about 15-20% done with his prequel "novella", and I'm learning that most of his tale is told as the more defining moments in his life. For someone who is practically ageless, writing an actual book about his entire existence would be too tall an order for me to adequately try to tackle.
With that said, I've decided that it may be better for me to release that information in another format. Once I've got a signifigant amount of that material suitable for release, I'm going to release that in a bi-weekly basis, here on the blog, and on tellest.com - it'll be a serial story that probably lasts an entire year.
Now, that's not to say that I won't turn around once everything is up and running, and put it on Amazon in eBook format. Once I collect everything into one novella, I'll release it at a fair price, and also include it as bonus material once the first trilogy is bundled.
Some of you may already be aware of that information. I believe I mentioned that before. But it directly helped to influence my thought for the next step as well.
My original plan for the future was to get The Enemy Within published, focus on the Mathias prequel, and then pump out a Kaos prequel before going forward. That plan is going to be amended slightly, for much of the same reason. Kaos' formulative and early years are important to the overall arc of his story, but for about seventeen years, his story is fairly bare bones, from an objective point of view.
Yet, people who are really big fans of the fan service may not want to miss that opportunity. It's in those seventeen years that he meets Alicia, David and Zachariah. It's in those seventeen years that he learns how to fight, and develops an affinity for treasure. It's even during that period of his life that the name Kaos actually begins to take meaning.
However, it isn't until he turns seventeen that his story is robust enough to tell in its own novel. The Valley of Mists, where Kaos was when his parents were murdered, will be that story. It will be around the same length of The Bindings of Fate, and it will essentially be my Hobbit. The focus will be on Kaos in a different time of his life, when his most popular allies, Steel Tip, David, etc., are not involved. It will help to shape him as a character, and it will definitely give his life a new direction.
Again, I'm not prepared to ignore those years that precede that huge event in his life. Instead, I'll be following the same format as the Mathias prequel, and release the younger Kaos years in a serial format on the blog and the website. Once The Valley of Mists is released, I might package the pre-book material in there as a bonus of some sorts.
The wonderful thing about this decision is that there should always be a steady stream of Tellest related material for fans of the series to become invested in. In addition to the Mathias and Kaos short stories that are on their way in, my best friend and longtime collaborator, Kevin Gallagher, has also expressed interest in going a step further for the series. He's going to be taking it in a new direction, developing a new character from the ground up. With his help, Tellest will have the capacity to grow even more.
As you can see, there are a lot of things happening in and around the world of Tellest. Today, we only talked about the literary side of things, but the world is growing with every passing day, and I cannot wait to see where the next few months take us!
Once The Child of the Stars Trilogy is completely released, I'm going to briefly take a moment to focus on one of the most powerful beings in the the Tellest universe. The king of the gods, Mathias, has a very interesting backstory, as you'll learn if you read The Enemy Within.
The more I thought about it, however, the less it made sense for his story to be released as a book. I'm about 15-20% done with his prequel "novella", and I'm learning that most of his tale is told as the more defining moments in his life. For someone who is practically ageless, writing an actual book about his entire existence would be too tall an order for me to adequately try to tackle.
With that said, I've decided that it may be better for me to release that information in another format. Once I've got a signifigant amount of that material suitable for release, I'm going to release that in a bi-weekly basis, here on the blog, and on tellest.com - it'll be a serial story that probably lasts an entire year.
Now, that's not to say that I won't turn around once everything is up and running, and put it on Amazon in eBook format. Once I collect everything into one novella, I'll release it at a fair price, and also include it as bonus material once the first trilogy is bundled.
Some of you may already be aware of that information. I believe I mentioned that before. But it directly helped to influence my thought for the next step as well.
My original plan for the future was to get The Enemy Within published, focus on the Mathias prequel, and then pump out a Kaos prequel before going forward. That plan is going to be amended slightly, for much of the same reason. Kaos' formulative and early years are important to the overall arc of his story, but for about seventeen years, his story is fairly bare bones, from an objective point of view.
Yet, people who are really big fans of the fan service may not want to miss that opportunity. It's in those seventeen years that he meets Alicia, David and Zachariah. It's in those seventeen years that he learns how to fight, and develops an affinity for treasure. It's even during that period of his life that the name Kaos actually begins to take meaning.
However, it isn't until he turns seventeen that his story is robust enough to tell in its own novel. The Valley of Mists, where Kaos was when his parents were murdered, will be that story. It will be around the same length of The Bindings of Fate, and it will essentially be my Hobbit. The focus will be on Kaos in a different time of his life, when his most popular allies, Steel Tip, David, etc., are not involved. It will help to shape him as a character, and it will definitely give his life a new direction.
Again, I'm not prepared to ignore those years that precede that huge event in his life. Instead, I'll be following the same format as the Mathias prequel, and release the younger Kaos years in a serial format on the blog and the website. Once The Valley of Mists is released, I might package the pre-book material in there as a bonus of some sorts.
The wonderful thing about this decision is that there should always be a steady stream of Tellest related material for fans of the series to become invested in. In addition to the Mathias and Kaos short stories that are on their way in, my best friend and longtime collaborator, Kevin Gallagher, has also expressed interest in going a step further for the series. He's going to be taking it in a new direction, developing a new character from the ground up. With his help, Tellest will have the capacity to grow even more.
As you can see, there are a lot of things happening in and around the world of Tellest. Today, we only talked about the literary side of things, but the world is growing with every passing day, and I cannot wait to see where the next few months take us!
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