Spires of Infinity FINAL final draft

I've put up the first half of the final draft of Spires of Infinity and it can be downloaded at the bottom of this page

The biggest changes between this draft and the second draft are in the wording of things. Basically the final draft was all about finding any leftover continuity issues and gramatical oopsies that I didn't catch in previous drafts.

Most of the edits that my Agent suggested have to do with the word "Magic" I'm pretty much trying to remove every single mention of magic. Oh, the magic itself still exists, it's just not called magic. Why? Because this is not a fantasy book. It's a sci-fi book and sci-fi fans don't want to see the word "Magic" in their sci-fi books. I did a TON of genre blending in this story, taking elements from a bunch of different genres that don't normally belong together and working them into science fiction. For the most part they all fit pretty well. The only one that really stood out was magic. The fact that magic exists is extremely important for later books that I've yet to write, and so it has to be introduced in teh beginning, but using the actual word "Magic" to describe it is actually taking away from the appeal of the story to the target audience. When you're writing a Post Apochalyptic, Science-Fantasy Western, you kinda have to choose which audience to go with and make all of the genre aspects that don't normally go with that audience seem like they do.

A good example of this is in Star Wars. George Lucas wanted sword fighting wizards in space. And when you say it like that it sounds freaking ridiculous. Rather than calling their swords swords, he called them lightsabers, and mde the blades be lazers. Instead of calling the magic magic he called it the Force. He didn't call wizards wizards, he called them jedi. Everyone knows that they're sword fighting wizards in space, but everyone accepts it in a sci-fi movie because he uses different words to describe them.

I also was trying to be a bit mysterious in not explaining exactly how it works, but that just makes me look lazy, so i've also added a few more detailed descriptions of how it works as well as removing the actual word "Magic" from most parts of the story.

Another change is in my way of explaining what Heretics are. It was a bit vague, and most people won't really get it without reading other stories I've written in the same universe, which is something I don't want them to have to do. So I'm going through and explaining that Heretics are actually the root of most stories about vampires and werewolves, because they basically are vampires and werewolves all rolled up into one. It makes for a tad bit more acceptably believeable race of people than what I had before.

Anyway, working hard on getting this done. I'll get the rest up before the end of the week I think.