I'm writing this blog today to announce the completion of the original trilogy of books I started writing 12 years ago this August. It's funny to look back and realize it has taken me that long, but I suppose the evidence is incontrovertible. I have DOZENS of versions of the first book, ranging from the very very first to the absolute final incarnation. The second book, there are four versions. And for the third there is just the one. I suppose that goes to show how you evolve as a writer and get a little bit better with each passing year. Of course, completing the third also allows me to cross something else off my list of 26 Golden Things. Reader behold!
#11 - A Tidy Conclusion; finish writing my third novel.
Picture this: Sean Parker, age 14, has just graduated from the 8th grade at James Madison Middle School in Appleton, WI. It is the summer of 2000, and he is kind of fat. That last part isn't true, actually, because he was always big boned and had started going through a growth spurt that summer, so to categorize him as FAT would be an overstatement (and should wait until January 2001 when he did get fat.) See?
Okay, anyway, that's me when those days of hell were over, with my friend (best/only (I was a loser (really)) @klreynol on 8th grade graduation night. Growing up I had always had a pretty avid imagination. From playing games with my siblings and the other neighbor kids growing up in California (the make-believe kind of "I'm the Pink Ranger and you guys are blah-blah and blah,") to writing short stories and poems that, looking back on them, were pretty fucking creepy. I'll post one sometime.
The summer after 8th Grade was a boring one but one filled with a lot of apprehension for what my Freshman year of High School would bring. @klreynol and I were taking her dogs for a walk and started daydreaming out loud as to what things would be like when we were adults. I.E., living in Southern California in a beach house and working as marine biologists somewhere.
Truthfully.
We started talking about what it would be like if we had "powers," and that maybe we should write stories about it. Together we returned to her house and started poking through a book of baby names, looking for some that we loved and would represent us in the written world we were about to create. I chose the name Banning Sol, and @klreynol chose Bryna Shaw.
We each had a red notebook, though I can't exactly recall what type. I think they were Mead, and maybe @klreynol's had a spiral on it but I know mine didn't. Sidetrack, sorry. We had taped some pictures to the front covers as well, because we were cool like that. Immediately we were writing ESSENTIALLY the same story but told from opposite points of view.
Banning Sol and Bryna Shaw were best friends and lived in a beach house in Los Angeles. They had telekinetic powers, worked at a Sea Worldesque aquarium, and employed some sort of witchcraft/spells to get through the day. They get confronted by a villain named Damien and fight him wearing black-leather uniforms (X-Men had just come out in theaters, gimme a break,) on a pier. The end. Oh yeah, they call themselves team X-Factor. Again, X-Men had just come out. When the stories were finished, we showed them to eachother. We re-wrote them. Showed them off again.
I would actually give anything to have my notebook again, but alas, it was lost sometime over the last 12 years. Of course I still have the original version of the book, typed, and it is 13 pages long. Once I typed it up on my old HP Pavillion, I decided it needed a name and from then on my book was called "The Originality." Partly because I thought it was a cool title, and partly because I thought I made the word up.
Again, truthfully.
Over the next few months, as school started and childhood gradually ended, I rewrote "The Originality" a few more times. I even gave it out as a Christmas present to some of my friends. By then I had created a best friend for Banning named Matt and a love-interest named Sydney. By January of 2001 the book took a vague shape of what it would eventually be... and then @klreynol and I stopped being friends.
In hindsight it was a silly fight, but it was a real one none-the-less and resulted in us not speaking for three years almost to the day.
In the interim I reworked the book. Then I edited it. Then I rewrote it. Then I edited it. Then I rewrote... you get the picture. I moved it as far away from what it had been and toward what started to become something much larger, because I didn't want it to be joint collaboration anymore. I created a world... a world that seemed real, with characters that had started to feel incredibly real. Banning Sol and his best friend Matthew Jordan, living together in New York City in the year 2336. After discovering a mysterious ring with the word "Onyxus" inscribed on the inner band, Banning moves alone to Quillsberg, SanAndrea, the island nation California became after the big earthquake in 2076. He meets his love interest Sydney Becker and her best friend Bryna Shaw, feeling a connection to both girls immediately. Banning eventually learns he is what is called a Koa, a gifted member of the human species that is being hunted down and destroyed by the bounty hunter Damien Fausteu. I can go on.
The point I am trying to reach is that writing is an incredibly personal process, and when you get down to it, you start pouring your own blood into it. I've said in the past that I feel like a schizophrenic when I write because these characters, particularly Bryna and Sydney and everyone NOT Banning (he's just me, slightly butched up,) are facets of me. Pieces of my own personality that I am expanding and blowing up to give a life and an individual personality, and the creepy thing about that is that at the end of the day, they are all me. So really as a writer you get to see allllll of the people living inside your head come out on the page. Anywho.
When @klreynol and I resumed our friendship in 2004, I felt like an ass. She knows it. But the story still existed and I wanted her to read it. And she did... several times. She became my editor in every meaning of the word, learning the ins and outs of "The Originality" better than anyone else. It didn't take long for me to realize I should dedicate the first book to her, and I followed through with it as you will see below. Flashing forward a few years to 2009, I decided the time had come for one final rewrite of "The Originality."
That picture above was from Katie and I spending SEVERAL hours pouring through the first book in the spring of 2009. The board to the left is a break-down of every plot point through every chapter of the book. To the right are the locations used, the names of every character, types of vehicles, etc. It was back to formula to turn the book from something that wasn't entirely coherent into a story that was rock solid. With that rewrite came a new title that would get rid of my own embarrassment and hint at something that actually had to do with the story. Something that hinted at a larger world.
"The Onyxus Chronicles: Episode I" was born.
My Bests can attest to the fact that I always aim to make people cry. Not by being mean, but by being incredibly sweet or sentimental when they least expect it. The running joke is that I collect their tears. That being said, the biggest compliment I have gotten on Episode I is that it has illicited tears from all 13 people who have read it (save for one. Shithead.) I love that I wrote something that could have an affect like that... it makes me feel like I'm not the only person attached to these characters.
My favorite part of the first book? I can't pick anything so I'm going to say it's the dialogue, especially that between Sydney and Bryna. Not to toot my own horn more than I already have, but I can create a moment between characters like you wouldn't fuckin' believe! Finale page tally: 568.
So we move on to Episode II.
I neglected to mention that originally there was a very short treatment for a continuation of the adventures. Banning and Bryna board a plane to Hawaii and the plane ends up crashing, and I don't really remember what else but it ended with a bunch of people dying and the characters wind are stranded on a strange island called "Myth." I never got much farther than that.
Over the years I had tinkered and toyed with Episode II and what it entailed. I think I always had a much more grand view of what it would be and it never ended up being that. At first the book revolved around mermaids and elves and fairies, along with a human protagonist named Themis and a goblin king named Seklu Drow that SEEMED like he could be the "misunderstood bad guy" but ended up just being a dick with no motive. When I finished the rewrite of the first book I "rewrote" Episode II and then passed it off to @klreynol to edit. Having never read it at all before, she... liked it? A little? But while she may have enjoyed the continuation of the story, there were a SHIT TON of problems she found with it.
Chief among them: people could teleport by clapping their hands. Looking back on that I still laugh.
When my relationship with the dreaded ex started to crumble, I turned a harsher eye on my work and decided I would give it the "final rewrite" treatment that I attacked Episode I with. And it worked. I threw every criticism @klreynol offered at the story and removed the silliness of it to paint it with a much darker shade. I made my villains into actual villains and in the process I allowed the story to evolve into something so much greater. I blush and wave my hands away at any compliments I receive on the book, but really I am incredibly proud of the lore I have started to create. You know it's decent when the people you allow to start reading it begin to agree.
The island "Myth" became "Dagrún." The elves became the ailill; the mermaids became the enki. The fairies the tien, the goblins the usha, and the humans the manu. They were given purpose. They were given motives. Above all, they were given personalities. And while a few characters from Episode I are largely not included in Episode II, two new characters have taken the empty spaces at Banning's sides; Tristan and Saphrinity Nargos, the ailill siblings.
I didn't realize it at the time but Tristan would wind up becoming my favorite character that I have written.
So I finished Episode II officially in August of 2011. Signed, sealed, and dedicated to another of my bests, @markstyleme. He had gone through a lot with me during the construction of the novel and to me it only made sense to dedicate it to him. Granted, he has yet to finish reading it almost a full year later (ahem.) The reason behind the dedication line cane be found on my Facebook page for anyone so inclined, in the album from his birthday.
Only a couple people have read this addition to my series and the response has been fairly positive. There are some errors... not really errors, but areas of improvement. Until I get them hammered out I am a little wary of allowing people to read it as I would only want to present my material in the best possible way. I hope the few (two... maybe one) of you dying to read this can be patient just a smidgen longer!
My favorite part of the second book though? The fight between Banning and the Manika (big fucking monster/dragon/thing) in the final chapter. Holy shit, I don't think I will ever top this one as it gets bigger and bigger until a FANTASTIC climactic moment. DEFINITELY the best 18 pages I've ever written! I can't wait to see it turned into a movie. Final page tally: 604.
With all of that done, there was only one thing left to do. Create Episode III... the problem child I had been neglecting. Here's the thing with Episode III: it never existed as a story. It was the afterthought to the first two books; the way I would "probably" end everything. In September of 2007 I wrote a five page treatment of the ending of the trilogy, almost like a "hyper real" version of what could happen. Everyone that died, what Banning has gone through, etc. etc., all condensed to those short pages that I could keep as a goal. Episode III consisted of a few pages of notes, a bunch of movie quotes that would shape my thought process, and that was it. Really.
Not a month had passed after finishing Episode II that I began construction on the new book. I couldn't stop myself, I wanted to get rolling on it so bad.
This book was going to be different seeing as it was starting from scratch. I started with an outline (for the first time) and filled it out extensively. That took a while. I chose the plot points and struggled a great deal with the reasonings behind some of those plot points. Why was THIS character doing THAT to the OTHER character? Parts of these choices I am still piecing together.
The funny thing about writing from scratch is that you have no influence AT ALL as to what it is you are going to create. Everytime I rewrote one of the other books I had to follow a certain path because things had to lay themselves out in a certain way. A before B and then can come C. But with a new book I was able to just... let my fingers fly. And when I sent @klreynol the first few chapters just before Christmas when I took a writing break, she had a reaction to it that surprised me.
She said it was the best work I had ever written.
So with that in mind, when spring rolled around and I got to working on the book again, I did so with this weird determination that I hadn't felt before. I actually cried a couple times while writing scenes that were in NO way sad because they were scenes that I needed to pump out in order to keep the story moving and they were scenes that made me bored.
I think I just shot my book in the proverbial foot, lol.
I don't mean boring in the way you might think; they were scenes that would link together the OTHER scenes, the ones I wanted to get to but didn't know how. They had to be the "Why?" behind the "WOW!" Episode III takes place on another world that obviously doesn't exist, and creating that from the ground up was incredibly daunting and at most times, a nightmare. But I did it. And I wrote it. And I cried a lot when I got to the end and I cried a lot when I edited, because in all ways possible... this was the end of a journey it took me 12 years to complete. If you're laughing at that, tell me the biggest thing you've ever accomplished and we'll compare notes.
When trying to decide who to dedicate this book to, it became obvious that it shouldn't be dedicated to a person at all but to a thing. No one forced me to write this, no one caused me to write this... I did it for myself. I pushed myself to finish it for a "thing" that has started to shape and define me, as I 've referenced in previous blogs, and that being the Golden Year. It was only fitting to acknowledge this achievement with the year it was attained in.
There are plenty of issues with this book and seeing as it is only in the "first draft" stages, there will likely be many changes. But I am pleased with it... it feels whole. The novel wraps up the story lines I set in motion years ago and does so in a satisfying way. I'm sure once I've taken a step away from it to breathe a bit, I can approach the story with fresh eyes and add to it a bit more in the way only I know how to, "beefing it up."
I only ever set out to write three books in this series. Banning Sol always had a beginning, a middle, and an end. The people that came throughout were sometimes killed, sometimes immortalized, and sometimes left alone to be one of the few survivors. I managed to tie up all of my loose ends and I did it in a way that didn't compromise my messages. If the first book is about letting go of what you cannot control and the second book is about coming to terms with the things that have happened, then the third book is about forgiving. Not only forgiving those who have done you wrong but forgiving yourself as well. I feel that's something everyone can learn from... and that's how we come back around to #11 on my list of 26 Golden Things.
#11 - A Tidy Conclusion; finish writing my third novel.
Oh, and my favorite part of Episode III? The final pages where you, the reader, figure out the story doesn't end with Episode III. Current page tally: 434.
Goodnight kiddies (c:
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