Future Plans

I’ve come to face facts. I haven’t been able to sit and work on any stories in over a year. Complications from my day job have tied me down both in and out of work. What little free time is taken by things that need to be done for home and family, or simply taken by exhaustion. I have multiple certifications to obtain, work orders to keep up on, and have other responsibilities to keep up with on top of that.

There is a light at the end of the tunnel, although it’s a very long tunnel.

I’m planning retirement from my current day job in four years. That’ll mark my 25th year and I’m getting out early. This isn’t just so that I can focus more on side projects and writing, there’s a variety of other contributing factors, but I plan to get back into writing afterward and continuing my existing stories as well as a few other one-offs.

I’ll still be working of course. I don’t see writing as ever becoming a solid source of income, it’s more of a passion. I’ll find something smaller and part-time. I don’t want something that will drag me down and require the dedication that I currently struggle to provide.

So here’s looking toward the spring of 2024! I’m hoping that something new will be coming out around that time.

I’ve discovered magic!

Well, not really, but I HAVE figured out how I’m going to implement it into Road of Skulls. The fun part about how magic works in this story is that I also have a way to force a barbarian with little knowledge of the mystical arts into learning how to bring his magical energy forward. This is done by frustrating the hell out of him, which can lead to a few comedic moments between tense situations.

Anyone who has ever played a barbarian in Dungeons & Dragons will know the fun that can be had at their expense (usually ending in the death of whoever was having that fun). Barbarians are battle driven, and although they lack a high intelligence off the battlefield, they can easily take out a larger opponent once they have the proper motivation.

Now give that barbarian the ability to weld magic out of the blue.

This’ll be interesting.

What is magic?

It’s a hard thing to describe in writing. I’ve read a lot of stories that use magic in their mechanics, and it seems like each is detailed differently.

In the Inheritance Cycle (Eragon) casting a spell that’s too strong can completely use up a person’s energy and kill them. Your body is a gas tank that CAN (and will) run out. The characters get around this issue by storing energy into objects over time and using them to feed their spells (or have dragons contribute the energy). This creates a limit to what the characters can do and helps to build both tension and risk.

In the The Wheel of Time there’s two types of magic. Both sexes weld two sides of the same coin, so to speak, although the male’s side has been corrupted. The more a man (who’s magically adept) uses magic, the more he falls into madness. In this series the magically capable females capture and imprison the male magic users (who are few and far between). They attempt to strip the ability to use magic from them (which usually results in their death). The main character is a male magic user, which as you can imagine makes for an interesting story as he tries to bring an end to the corruption while maintaining a grasp on his slipping sanity.

And let’s look at Star Wars (also books, although having originated on the big screen). Magic is referred to as ‘The Force’ and is used in a multitude of ways (object manipulation, visual projections, mind reading, and even the creation of life to name just a few). In that series a magic user can manipulate the world around them basically by communicating with it (this is the MOST basic interpretation, we won’t get into Midichlorians or the Whills). The stronger a magic user is, the more they can manipulate, only dying from exhaustion in the most extreme cases. although I love Star Wars, the only tension resulting from how the force is handled in these stories is a result of the enemy being stronger in their ability to weld it.

We can also use the Marvel Cinematic Universe as an example (which originated in book form). Removing Asgard as an example (of which magic is just a higher level of technology), we have the magic used by sorcerers (Dr Strange). They pull energy from nearby dimensions and manipulate it as needed. The Ancient One likened it to writing programs on the fly. I’m not sure if there was a limit to how much a magic user could do considering that Marvel had to strip Dr Strange of most powers in the books because he had become unbeatable. This leaves your story with ‘Dragonball Z syndrome’ and means that enemies get stronger and stronger until the reader just gives up because of the ridiculousness taking place. Their limit is simply how much knowledge they have access to.

The reason why I’ve been pondering these examples lately is that I had taken a break from writing The Road of Skulls right at the point that magic is explained in a detailed form. This is the type of concept that seems like it should be easy, but you don’t realize the repercussions it can have later on in your story until it’s too late. Do I set limits on what a magic user can do? What will those limits be? Knowledge, strength, will? What happens if those limits are exceeded?

So, for the next day or so I get to struggle with this concept.

Finished with another book! (original post August 25, 2016)

The first book of the Devastated Earth series now has a complete first draft! I’m handing it over to a friend today along with the first book of the New Empire series for a preliminary review. While he’s doing that I’m going to reread the New Empire volume one and check for grammar/spelling errors. I’d like to think that a professional editor would be in the future, but money is very tight right now. My progress with these two books may just stall after that.

But I do have a stand-alone book to write. The outline is complete and I basically just have to type it all out. This could take some time of course, but it has more completed ahead of time than the other two had. Depending on how long my review of the other two take I may just hold this book off as a NaNoWriMo project. Only time will tell.

In other news I’ve been playing with my Raspberry Pi’s a lot more. This website is now being hosted on one, which has become a part of the home network. It has a nightly backup, weekly restart, and SFTP capability. Through this project I’ve learned a lot more about Linux (especially the command prompt). I’ve also put some more touches on my Pi Calendar (an older Raspberry model B+ that hangs in the den).

The best part of this setup is if the power flickers, or fails the Pi puts almost no strain on my UPS. My big PLEX/file server shuts down after one minute and the routers, modem, and Pi just keep chugging along. Unless it’s left unattended for some time the website stays up and running.

That’s it for now. Good day and safe travels!