Wind & Ash

That's being remedied now as I do another read-through of the whole thing. I haven't done a full read-through in a couple of years probably, so I'm excited to do it again, and I'll hopefully be smoothing out all the rough bits.

Update: I've published Gravekeeper on itch.io! https://twitter.com/ZachKWhitworth/status/1281004624946827266?s=20 It's free/pay-what-you-want, so there’s no reason not to read it!

My friend’s husband is an editor and he offered to take a look at my manuscript! He just got back to me and he really liked it! He said it seemed very professional and offered to help me with it however he could. I’ll be talking with him some over the next few days, but I guess my next step is to hire a line editor...

I’m officially opening the first part of Those Who Touch the Fire, “Prologue” to test readers! If you’re interested, keep reading.

Here’s how I’m doing this: you can either use the Public File or a Private File. Everyone using the Public File can see other people’s suggestions, make comments, discuss things, etc. With a Private File, only you and I can see what you have to say.

I’ve been kinda busy and forgot to make a post, but

I finished my first draft of Those Who Touch the Fire! (not counting the end of the epilogue)

I finished it Friday night (technically 02:30 on Saturday) and then did stuff on Saturday and had a bad headache today and so I only just now got around to announcing it, but I’ve actually already started my first pass of edits.

I’m close to finishing that scene rewrite (500 words of spooky fog has become a few thousand words of drama, action, and torture), but my mind is still on the Epilogue... and how I totally don’t know what to do with it. Honestly, I think I’m going to have to get outside help.

My current plan is finish this scene, then go back and reread the story as a first pass at editing. After that, I’ll find test readers and ask them what they want out of an Epilogue.

The issue is it either comes across as waaay too much boring stuff with Embla reuniting with some characters from early in the story, then learning to live in her new conditions and deciding what to do with her future; or on the other end it’s all that stuff but glossed over in narration.

I stayed up until 5:00 last night writing and wrote almost the entirety of Embla’s battle with Dis (one little part had already been written), which now leaves me at the Epilogue. This is exciting! But also frustrating, as I don’t know how to write it.

I know what happens, but I’m bad at writing character reunions and I’m not sure how to pace it. This is an issue I knew was coming, as I had already written the ending once before and was not happy with it.

Embla has returned to Hyde’s Field and is about to turn over the materials she’s gathered to Su Baba, after which she’ll hunt down Dis and kill that snakey sack of trash.

I don’t have much of her return written, but I have some of the fight and the events leading up to it.

The real issue is going to be the ending, which I’ve written and didn’t like. I’m not going to change it, but I AM going to write it differently. It was... emotional, but too short. I might split it into two parts: a sub-division of the greater part (“Beginnings & Ends”), which I would call “The Serpent Bites its Tail.” “Serpent” would show Embla’s recovery after the fight, as well as her return to Eisdell and the fallout from her dragon-slaying.

After that I would put an Epilogue, which would show Embla a little later in her life, living in a cabin in the woods near Eisdell. This would likely be set after Aska’s death.

Currently, the ending is just her recovering, going back, reuniting with her sister, then staying there for a while as Joth teaches her woodscraft so she can go live in the woods and be a one-armed lumberjack just like him. It ends with her transporting Aska to the new home she built for them and settling in for the night.

One thing that I hate doing is throwing out parts of stories that I’ve written. When I went back at the beginning of Those Who Touch the Fire and started editing through it/filling in the holes, I’ve come across lines, paragraphs, and pages that I’ve had to remove entirely. These, I’ve cut out and pasted into another document so as not to lose the.

However, I just recently wrote myself into a corner. I’d been lamenting the lack of action in the story and came across a line I’d written which was to introduce some kind of subterranean monster, which Embla would have to fight/run from. I started on this, drawing a potential connection to something weird (but ultimately inconsequential) Embla had seen just previously. I liked the scene, but I was worried that, since it was weird and eerie simply to be weird and eerie, it wouldn’t go over well with readers who wanted answers.

I started writing strange, unsettling formations in the cave around her, eventually having her encounter a large and disgusting maggot-thing... but I didn’t know where to go after that. I didn’t even really know what sort of monsters she would be facing, and anything I came up with seemed out of place. I thought of things like the Slow Mutants from The Gunslinger (snow-white, feral humanoids are a classic in this sort of situation), and I believe Lovecraft wrote a story (The Cave, I think) which had some sort of yeti-like beast (but he was much more into the horrors of evolution than I am). Now that I think about it, At the Mountains of Madness had caves and also had Shoggoths, a sort of creature which might have worked here... but I don’t think it would have been good.

I cut all this out, losing about a day of work in the process. I just don’t think simply having Embla encounter a monster would have been good. Maybe if she, like, fell down a hole or something and ended up in a nest and had to fight her way out... maybe that would have been alright, but she has a horse with her and that complicates matters. I couldn’t figure out what she would fight or how she would fight it, so I got rid of it.