Current WIP Talk.

It’s an Epic Dark Fantasy, that starts with various groups looking to be the first to find a lost city in the middle of a vast magically charged desert, the titular Ashlands. The stories of these groups and their quest across the wastes and what they discover have reverberations across the world. “Sometimes what is lost should stay lost, and some questions should never be answered.”

The origin of this novel is an odd story in and of itself. As this blog is still young and new, I haven’t yet posted about my World and the characters that live there. And to be honest that will be a long series of articles by themselves.

Originally this book was a standalone bridge novel between a duology and then a series (mapped at 3, 5, or 7 books). The duology was meant as a stepping stone to my world, sort of a primer and it was the introduction of two characters that I have written into a series of novellas. Keegan and Slater. So, the original timeline series would have been:

• In the Depths of Amon Niall (written)
• Return of the Necromancer (started)
• The Ashlands (Originally 100 Years Later) Current WIP.
• The Shadow Wars (or the Invasion of the Shadow Elves) 3+ books

Perhaps you notice “would have been.” The first book was completed and while it has a long and twisted story all its own (blog forthcoming). The short version, it was flawed and I wasn’t liking it, so I skipped ahead to the Ashlands. Sometimes that is a great lesson, you put so much time and energy into a novel and you can get obsessed and locked into it. You have to know when to walk away and when to accept that you can (and MUST) work on other things from time to time.

Getting back on topic, it is still early days with Ashlands, only about 20k words into the book and most of them might be cut. I forget where I heard this writing advice, it might be F. Paul Wilson or Tom Monteleone that first said this to me… But the short version is write the novel and then cut the first 3-5 chapters, that’s the true beginning of your story. I find myself agreeing with that. As mentioned above the story is about a race across a desert to find a lost civilization. And yet my first chapter is Keegan and Slater on a boat catching sight of the coast of the continent. It is a visual image I held in my head for months and it was something I HAD to write. The chapter is great… not just my words but it was workshopped and read by several people who all agree. Beautiful. Excellent dialogue. But chapter 2 is one of the other POV groups on their ship, and chapter 3 is a different POV back on Keegan’s ship. And maybe you see that I’m 6 chapters into the book and they haven’t gotten to the point where they all start the race into the desert.

Maybe a better starting chapter is in the last town before the desert and these groups all actually getting into the sands? We’ll discuss this in more blogs, and also talk about POV, action, and world building.