I began to write Monarch while I was still writing Forsaken Soul. I like to have multiple open projects at once. I do it so that I'm not trying to come up with concepts from scratch after I finish the previous project. This one was difficult from the beginning.
The only thing I knew going in to this project was that the main character had to be Yousef. He was the last of The Elders. There was no baseline for this character. He had very minimal appearances in Living Through the Glass and Prisoner of Castigation and he didn't have major roles in the four short stories either. All I had to go on was the things that I used to describe his character in those books, primarily his looks, his mysterious nature, being a womanizer and his ability to read minds.
It's not much to go on and admittedly, a story about that would be pretty boring. I had to think about this in another way. How could I give this character his own identity and his own life while managing to tie together the story of how he fits in with The Elders.
It wasn't an easy problem to solve. I was plagued by severe bouts of writer's block that forced me to put this story on pause. The problem got worse after I finished Forsaken Soul and I had to turn my attention to this story being my top priority. I would write small pieces of the story, but I didn't get the feeling that I was advancing anything.
In October (2017), I hit a wall personally and professionally. I thought about walking away from writing. I still can't say that the thought hasn't crossed my mind to this day. However, I felt bad about leaving this project out in the wind. The framework for this work was already in place. The only thing I needed to do was finish, edit and format it.
The only thing that kept me from quitting was a small, insignificant goal in the back of my mind. I'm not going to share the goal, but I will share a related benchmark. This March will mark five years since I self-published my very first book (The Midnight Manifesto). Monarch will be my fifteenth published project.
I just decided to write. It took two months from that point, but it's done. I find that the path this story took was nowhere close to where I thought it would go. I think it fits with the other short stories. I won't get into themes here, but I will do it the Fall of The Elders post going up right after this one.
If you are interested in Monarch, you can purchase a copy for $0.99 at Amazon and Smashwords. Reviews are encouraged and they would be greatly appreciated.
0 comments :
Post a Comment