Some words of wisdom...

Republican Politicians...  Guys.  Gals.  Others.  You have a problem.  Many of you began your 2016 presidential campaigns in 2012.  FOUR FREAKING YEARS AGO.  You want to know what happens when you spend four entire years blasting everyone who will listen with self-aggrandizing tales of your political prowess?  A spray tanned, orange psycho will walk in and steal the entire show from you in the eleventh hour, because everyone and anyone is sick to death of hearing from YOU.  So please.  For the love of all that is good and holy.  From now on.  SHOW SOME FREAKING RESTRAINT!!!  For all future elections, don't start campaigning the second the previous election is over.  No one wants to hear it.  And you might also try limiting yourselves down from 7000 candidates to two or three, because, again, no one wants to hear it.  If you want to run for president in 2020, you go for it.  But I don't want to hear a word about it from you until at least halfway through 2019.  This goes for democrats also, but since it was the republican part that was the freak show for the last four years, this is mostly directed at them.  Learn from your mistakes, and be freaking reasonable next time.  No one wants to hear how great a president you will be in 2020 before the president-elect is even sworn into office.  I'M LOOKING AT YOU NEWT GINGRICH, MARKO RUBIO, JEB BUSH, AND A DOZEN OR SO OTHERS.  FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS GOOD AND HOLY KEEP YOUR FREAKING MOUTHS SHUT FOR THE NEXT THREE YEARS!!!!!!!!!!!!

What I don't get...

So I see a lot of crap on the internet being the sad, pathetic, lonely, man-child that I am.  A lot of the crap I see these days, due to the Ghostbusters remake, is about sexism.  Two big issues people really like to argue about are these:  Why do men feel uncomfortable if their wives make more money than they do, or are more successful than they are, and Why do male gamers treat female gamers terribly online? You see, I don't really understand why these two things are an issue for any man.  I mean, is that not the dream?  Marrying a woman that makes so much money that you don't have to work?  Meeting a woman who shares your hobbies, so that you can do them together?  I don't get it.  Why are these even issues at all?  I mean, if I met a woman who was actually interested in me, and had a much better career than me, I would make my best attempt at a backflip, probably ending in a lot of pain and hilarity.  My most recent girlfriend Kaye and I actually MET playing video games online.  We became friends in the game, found out that we actually lived very close to one another, got together in the real world, and dated for more than a year before she moved to California to further her career.  A lot of our date nights ended with heading back to my place or hers to play two players games for a bit.  It was awesome.  She's like the only woman I've ever dated that actually plays more video games than I do.  She also made more money than I do, if not by much.  So I see stories on the internet of successful women that make a lot of money, and female gamers just being treated like crap by men I just don't get it.  I mean, why would you treat a woman who can pay off all your debt without breaking a sweat, and who shares one of your interests, like crap?  Makes no sense to me.  Apparently a lot of men out there are absolutely stupid dicks.

Thar she blows!!!

I'm done!!!  Finally!!!  I've finished the first draft of Memories of What Never Was.  I've posted Chapter 40, the Epilogue, and the full first draft, and you can find them at the bottom of this page if you are so inclined.

This basically just wraps things up and gives a bit of a teaser for what happens in the next book, which I plan to write while doing edits to this one.  We'll see if I'm able to juggle them both.  And look, counting the prologue and the epilogue, there's 42 chapters in this book.  Coincidence?  I THINK NOT!!!  BWAAHAAHAA!!!

But seriously though, I'm taking a bit of a break before I start in on the next book, and editing the first one.  I, unfortunately, just parted ways with my girlfriend of a little over a year.  She was accepted into a doctorate program at Stanford, and I am not able to pick up my life and move it to San Francisco as easily as she was.  We were talking about breaking up for a bit before that, so this just sort of made the deal for us.  One of those, we're really good friends, but we're not making any progress on the romantic side of things, so maybe we should see other people and keep in touch sort of things.  So, anyway, you can probably tell exactly when that happened by when I started writing a lot more a lot faster, looking back at the dates on my blog posts, haha.  It's amazing how much free time you suddenly have on your hands when you find yourself single again.

Memories of What Never Was Chapters 37-39

I finished up Chapters 37, 38, and 39 of Memories of What Never Was today, and if you feel the great urge to read them you can find them at the bottom of this page.

So, this is the climax.  I think it works a lot better than the one I originally planned for this rewrite.  This one focuses more on the characters, especially Kriss, who is the hero of the story, as she overcomes her trials and becomes who she needs to be for the rest of the story.  Something anyone who has read I Am Nobody, another book I wrote a couple years ago, might notice is the inclusion of Mia.  In I Am Nobody, she is the daughter of the Grim Reaper, being tested to see if she is worthy to take his place.  This is around 12,000 years later than when that book takes place in my gigantic timeline.  So in those 12,000 years she has, obviously, taken his place and is now Death.  She also give some really important information about what's going on, confirming that reality itself is unraveling, and she tells why Brand is special amongst Heretics.  He's not just the son of a human and a Fey in a human body.  He's the son of a dark god and a Fey in a human body.  I have more stories to tell about Mia, and how she becomes Death, but they'll have to wait for a while for me to finish this trilogy up.

There's just two more chapters to write and the first draft of this book is complete... but I've been writing for the last eleven and a half hours, so it'll have to wait for tomorrow after work.

Memories of What Never Was Chapter 36

I've finished up the first draft of Chapter 36 of Memories of What Never was, and you can find it at the bottom of this page

This is the beginning of the climax.  We've got Brand facing off against the one of the Seven he's been seeking vengeance against since the beginning of the book, Kriss trying to get herself killed, and the others trying not to die, while a Crusade army moves to surround everything and the Mage Knight get ready for a fight.  And yes, I realize that a lot of the details and crap are kind of glossed over, and the characters don't have an awful lot of personality.  It's the first draft.  I usually add all that stuff in later.

This is it.  This is the end of my previous attempt at writing this story.  Everything from here on is completely new.  It feels good to have finally gotten here.  And I'm kind of glad that I stopped, because the ending I have planned now is SO MUCH better than the one I was going to go with before.

Memories of What Never Was Chapter 35

I finished Chpater 35 of Memories of What Never Was and it can be found at the bottom of this page.
 

Raven's old girlfriend shows up and is understandably pissed at him.  I mean, he left to go get milk and has been gone FOR SEVEN YEARS!!!  Well, not really, but she's still pretty pissed.  It could possibly have something to do with the fact that he murdered all her friends, but I could be wrong.  In all previous versions of this story, Tryssyn a girl, was Tristan a boy.  Why the gender swap and previous love story?  I felt it gave a deeper relationship between these two characters.  The relationship between them as bros was okay, but the two of them needed a bit of a deeper connection with each other for the climax of book 2 to really work.  Plus I like the idea of this respected and powerful soldier also being a mom.  Did Raven father her oldest child?  I'll never tell, and neither will she.

And speaking of climaxes, we're almost there.  Originally, I had planned for this big, epic battle to take place, with a point of view character, Jonathan, directing the battle from the Crusade side.  But I've come to realize that I just don't have enough story for him this early on to justify a plotline for him in this book.  Keeping the story focused on Brand, Raven, Kriss and Temari removes a lot of the epicness I had planned, but it fits the narrative of this book a lot better.  I had to ask myself, which is more important, a huge battle for the sake of a battle, or a smaller look at the battle from the inside with a smaller group of characters that keeps the integrity of the story a lot better.  What is this book about?  Is it about two armies fighting each other, or is it about Kriss overcoming her past?  It wasn't a very difficult choice at all, really.  As Jonathan plays a much bigger role in the story in the next two books, I thought that I could move his introduction chapter in this book to the beginning of the next, and give a recap of the battle from his point of view after that to start book 2 off with a bang.

Memories of What Never Was Chapter 34

I've finished up chapter 34 of the first draft of Memories of What Never Was and you can find it at the bottom of this page if you are so inclined.

Kriss, very understandably, goes postal, Brand tells a story about a talking potato of legend, Temari blushes, eeps, and gets bullied into awkwardly failing at seducing a guard, and Raven digs a chunk of crystal out of Brand's back and kisses it.  With this chapter you get all this AND MORE!!!

Memories of What Never Was Chapter 33 Draft 1

I've finished up chapter 33 of Memories of What Never Was, and you can find it at the bottom of this page if you feel the great urge.

This one took a while to write, because it's mostly Brand's brand of humor.  Brand's humor usually consists of me writing down all of the most random things I can think of at the time.  He's basically an internet troll, who says weird and/or offensive things just to get a reaction out of people  The hard part with this is that I usually have to go through about five or six random things before I find one that's actually funny enough to stay, and with an entire chapter that's basically just Brand trying to be funny, it really strained my collection of weird random statements.  I wanted to have a chapter with Brand in a prison cell just annoying the everliving crap out of his guards.  It was fun writing this chapter, but at the same time, it was kind of exhausting.

Memories of What Never Was Chapter 32

Soooooooooooooo, done with Chapter 32 of Memories of What Never Was.  If you feel the great urge to read it, you can find it at the bottom of this page.

Some character building here.  I also wanted to reference Ghostbusters with the stairs, but without using the exact line, and Raven dropping the F bomb at the end is a bit of an inside joke for me.  In previous versions of this story he was death on anyone using bad language.  It just made me laugh to toss that in as a joke where I'm pretty much the only one that will get it.

Memories of What Never Was Chapter 31

I've finished up Chapter 31 of Memories of What Never Was and you can find it at the bottom of this page if you feel the great urge.

This chapter is where the characters meet and fight one of the villains of the story for the first time.  So far, this chapter contains more existing text from the previous version than any other chapters before it, but the chapter itself is still significantly changed from the original.  There are also several clues that I added in as to how this particular villain will be defeated, and how the time loop that the world is stuck in will ultimately be broken. 

I also made a few small edits to chapter 29 and 30, which I've re uploaded.  They're pretty small.  And probably unnoticeable to anyone but me, but I'm kind of a little OCD about continuity mistakes and can't rest until I've fixed them.

Ghostbusters *facepalm*

If you enjoy juvenile slapstick, dick and fart jokes, jokes that just keep going and going and going far past the point of being funny, horrible and offensive stereotypes, mindless action for the sake of mindless action, and plot holes you could drive a solar system through, you may enjoy this movie.  If you prefer well rounded characters, good writing, intelligent humor, and a story that makes sense, avoid it like the plague.  It's not a bad movie because it stars women, like so many people on the internet keep accusing anyone of saying it's bad of saying or implying, it's a bad movie because it's a bad movie.  It's badly made.  It's badly written.  It's badly paced.  The director allowed the actresses to improvise far too much of the comedy scenes, and the editor wasn't allowed to cut them down to appropriate length.  It's just a bad, bad, baaaaaaaaad movie.

Improvisational comedy is rarely, if ever, funny.  Because no one seems to know when it should end.  It may start out as amusing, but then it just keeps going, and going, and going, and going, and by the time the bit finally ends, it's gone way past any point where it might have been entertaining, and just becomes a boring mess of grown adults making fools of themselves.  And the bathroom humor, my god... you'd think there was no other humor in the universe by bathroom humor when it comes to comedies these days.  That is why I hardly ever go to see a comedy these days, because comedies in this day and age aren't funny.  It's just a bunch of dick and fart jokes.  Period.  That's all comedies are today.   And this one is no exception.  I mean, sure, the original had a short blowjob scene, and the dickless comment near the end, but THAT WAS IT!!!  THERE WERE NO MORE!!!  Most of the comedy in the original worked because it was more situational rather than a bunch of people standing around throwing jokes at each other.  Remember the part in the elevator where Ray says to turn on his untested nuclear backpack, and the other two crowd as far away from him as possible?  That was funny because it didn't sit there and tell you WHY it was funny for five minutes after the joke was made.  The people who write and improvised the comedy scenes in this movie do not seem to realize that when you sit around and explain WHY a joke is funny after it's made, IT'S NOT FREAKING FUNNY ANYMORE!!!  It becomes boring and offensive to the intelligence to those watching. 


This movie is an insult to the original.  The original had likeable, sympathetic characters.  It knew when to be funny.  It knew when to be serious.  It knew when to be scary.  It knew when it was time for an action scene, and how long that scene should last.  It had a really good balance between all of those things.  The new one is just a mess.  It's all over the place.  I think I laughed once during the whole movie, because it just wasn't funny.  Sorry, whoever wrote this crap, I don't find dick and fart jokes to be funny.  It doesn't seem to know HOW to be funny, HOW to be scary, HOW to be exciting.  It's just a really good example of utterly inept filmmaking.  There's a lot of talk about sexism regarding this movie.  If you don't like it, and you're a man, it automatically makes you sexist.  No.  That's idiocy.  Especially since the movie turned out to be just so terrible.  This movie would have been just as terrible if the cast was replaced with men.  I would have disliked it just as much.  Not because of the cast, but because the writing was so terrible, the improvised scenes dragged on FAR too long,  and the film, on a technical level, is just crap to look at.  This movie is a blatant cash grab that's not even trying to be good.

Does it deserve the sheer amount of hatred that it's getting on the internet?  Probably not.  But let me explain WHY it's getting that sheer amount of hatred. (besides it being an absolutely terrible excuse for a movie)  For the last twenty years or so, instead of coming up with new, original ideas, the film industry has been recycling old ones because a remake or reboot is cheap to make, and it's guaranteed to make a profit because of the already existing fanbase.  It doesn't have to be a good movie, it just has to look like a good movie in the trailer and it'll make money for not much effort.  This has been going on for decades, and frankly, a whole lot of people out there are sick of it.  The Ghostbusters remake came at a time where people are just sick to death of seeing older movies that they enjoyed, remade badly, (And this one WAS made badly.  Anyone who watches this movie and says it was well made is either delusional or lying.)  and for no real reason except to make the studio a quick buck.  It was basically the last straw.  People have been putting up with this crap for years, and when they saw the first trailer, which looked absolutely terrible, for yet another bad remake of a good movie, they flipped.  No one wants to see yet another lazy, cheap ripoff of something they love.  We've all seen it before, probably multiple times.  So when trailers for this movie started coming out, a whole lot of people who are fed up with this crap just collectively said, "no more."  Had this movie been released five years ago, it probably wouldn't have gotten such a negative reaction out of people.  But the pressure has been building up for quite some time, and this just happened to be the movie that came along at the right time to make it explode.  It has nothing to do with the cast being women.  It has to do with so many people not wanting to see yet another terrible, lazy remake of a good movie. 

To tell you the truth, the actresses deserved a better movie to be in, and all those women out there rabidly attacking men for not liking it, ladies, you deserved a better movie too.  You deserved a movie that equaled the original.  That had badass female characters that weren't horrible stereotypes.  You deserved a movie that was WORTH defending.  This one is not.  Not in any way.  I wish I could say that this was a great movie, a worthy successor to the original.  But I can't.  I wish that this was a well made, smart, scary, funny, well paced, exciting movie.  But it's not.  I wish that all the people who were defending this movie could rub it in the faces of those who were saying it would suck.  But they can't.  This movie is just as bad, just as lazy, and just as poorly put together as everyone thought it would be.  I'm, frankly, quite surprised that there isn't more outcry from feminists about this movie.  Of everyone, I would have thought they would be it's biggest critics.  You have this movie that is a huge step forward for women in cinema, and what did you get out of it?  What were you defending to the death over the internet?  What were you rabidly attacking any man who said it didn't look all that good for?  A bunch of dick and fart jokes?  Horrible stereotypes?  Bathroom humor?  Are they proud of that?  Are they proud to have defended that?  Of all the people in this world, I would have thought that the feminists would be the angriest over it.  You deserve a better movie than this.  We ALL deserve a better movie than this.  Not to mention the whole "what is it with men laughing at dick and fart jokes, they're not funny" question that gets thrown about by women so often, and then when they get their movie, the movie they're defending so rabidly, what is it?  A BUNCH OF DICK AND FART JOKES!!!  Hypocritical much?  I never want to hear another woman say men are stupid because they laugh at dick or fart jokes so long as I live.  Your smug superiority card just got revoked.  Honestly, this movie's biggest critics should be women, but where are all the women complaining about it?  Nowhere to be found.  I'm sorry if I sound like a sexist douche for saying that, but it's true.

I'm not saying it's a bad movie because I'm sexist.  I've written several (bad) books, most of which have female protagonists. Star Wars: The Force Awakens was an absolutely amazing movie with a female protagonist.  I loved every minute of it, and thought Daisy Ridley's character was the best part of the movie.  The next Star Wars movie Rogue One, also has a female protagonist, and it looks completely awesome.  10 Cloverfield Lane had a female protagonist and it was also amazing.  I thought Jessica Jones was even better than Daredevil was, mostly because of Krysten Ritter's performance as the title character.  That role required an amazing actress to give it all of the depth that it needed, and she delivered spectacularly.  And lets not forget the most awesome of them all, Ripley from the Alien franchise.  I'm not saying that the Ghostbusters remake is a bad movie because I don't like women in leading roles in movies.  I'm saying it's a bad movie because it's a bad movie.  It looked like a bad movie from the very first trailer BECAUSE IT WAS A BAD MOVIE!!!  The cast, and the genders of the cast, really had nothing to do with it.  It was just a terrible piece of garbage, and everyone involved in it's making should be ashamed of themselves. 

Save your money.  Watch the original.  You'll enjoy it more.

Memories of What Never Was Chapter 30

I've finished up Memories of What Never Was chapter 30 and you can find it at the bottom of this page.

The last chapter was probably the darkest in the whole book up to this point, so I felt that this chapter needed to be a little more light-hearted to help balance that.  So this is basically our heroes taking stock after battling with one of the Seven, and Brand being Brand to lighten the mood a bit. 

Memories of What Never Was Chapter 29

Sooooooo, I finished up the first draft of chapter 29 of Memories of What Never Was, and you can find it at the bottom of this page if you feel the great urge to read it.

What I wanted to do with Kriss was have her completely broken in the beginning, then sort of get better, and then have all the pieces that are coming back together inside of her just get completely shattered again.  So this chapter is the completely shattering again chapter.  She is the hero of this story, and this is her darkest moment, the point where she truly sees what she is, and what she has allowed herself to become.  A hero has to be tested and tried before they can rise above their faults and become what they need to become in order to win in the end.  She was getting better, but she was still broken inside.  She needed this so she could stop lying to herself and move on to really healing, but she can't do that alone.  She needs someone to show her the way, but that's a bit further down the line.  There's a few more things that need to happen first.

And Chapter 28 too.

Did some more writing tonight after a bit of a break, and finished up Chapter 28 of Memories of What Never Was, and if you feel the great urge, you can find it here

This chapter can basically be summed up as "Meanwhile, here's what's happening in Kriss' head."  I've purposely not had a chapter from her point of view since Brand told her how to start dealing with her emotional issues, just because I want this chapter to illustrate how differently she's started to see the world, and because it makes the next chapter a bit more of a sucker punch, by having her first saying that life isn't so bad after all, in time, she can learn to deal with it, and them almost immediately get shown how wrong she is.  Is it a bit manipulative on my part?  Uh, yeah.  Of course it is.

Memories of What Never Was Chapters 25-27

So there I was, minding my own business, when some annoying Brazilian fungus hopped off of a package I was delivering and took up residence in my sinuses... for five freaking months...  So yeah, one of the last things you feel like doing afters spending a hard day at work out in the heat with the sinus infection from hell is to sit down and work some more.  Now that I've run out of excuses for not finishing this book up, hopefully I'll finally finish this book up.  I kind of expected it to be done by now, buuuuuuuuuut things keep popping up and taking all of my time and energy.  It's very annoying. 

So, anyway, I finally got back to writing this week, and have chapters 25-27 of Memories of What Never Was up on my site if you feel the great urge to read them.  You can find them at the bottom of this page.  In these chapters we have the big reveal of who the villain of the story really is, and what he wants.  We also have some character moments for Raven and Temari. 

Memories of What Never Was Chapter 24

I've finished up Chapter 24 of Memories of What Never Was, and you can find it at the bottom of this page if you're so inclined to read it.

This chapter really kind of illustrates the changes I've made in Temari's character between this version and the previous one.  Originally I had her as sort of a comic relief character because everyone else was so serious.  But then it occurred to me that she's the only one of the core cast that isn't white, and having the only minority in the main cast also be the comic relief character seemed a little on the racist side to me, so I switched things up and made her more solemn and stoic, and switched the comic relief duties over to Brand.  Which works better anyway, because he's there for the whole book, rather than just half of it like Temari. 

In other news, they're rearranging routes at my post office because after that mail count we had last month, pretty much every route came back as being evaluated as overburdened.  So, they're cutting off the two most horrible, awful, difficult and time consuming pieces of my route, and replacing them with a piece of another route that is actually really nice, and closer to the rest of my route than the two pieces they're cutting away.  Man, that's gonna be nice.  My job is going to be so much easier once those changes go into effect.  Too bad I have to wait three whole weeks for that to happen though.  Someone needs to invent time travel so badly.

Memories of What Never Was Chapters 21-23

I did a bit of revising in Chapters 21 and 22 and reposted them, and I also got Chapter 23 finished and posted and you can find them at the bottom of this page if you're so inclined to read them.

Work has been epically harsh these last few months.  I've been working 2-3 extra hours a day because my mail route has grown to be absolutely gigantic over the last year, combined with the added packages from amazon.  We also had a mail count about a month ago, where they count every single piece of mail, every single magazine, every single package, every single second that I spend doing anything all day long, measuring every step that I take, to evaluate how much my route is worth and how big it is, etc etc etc.  And during that time, I have to go through and recount everything to verify that it was recorded correctly, which adds another hour or two to every day.  So yeah, the last few months have been rough, and I have been coming home from work late and basically just dropping onto my couch for a couple hours not really wanting to do anything.  So yeah, haven't exactly been doing much writing lately because of it.

I wasn't really happy with chapters 21 and 22, so I went back and made a few changes to them, and I like them much more now.  Chapter 23 is a pretty long one, which basically puts Temari's character into context.

I'll try to kick myself into getting more of this done faster.  They should be cutting a big chunk off of my route in the next few weeks and hopefully I won't be so freaking exhausted when I get home after that.  It would be great if I didn't have to work and could sit at home and do nothing but my hobbies all day long, but alas, we live in reality, and in reality things suck.

Fun Fact

Have you ever wondered why the sky is blue?  Well, let me tell you.  The air that we breathe is only 20% oxygen, which is colorless.  It's almost 80% Nitrogen, which is actually NOT colorless.  When you compress Nitrogen to a liquid or a solid, it is sky blue.  So there you have it.  The sky is blue because sky blue is the actual color of Nitrogen, which makes up the vast majority of the atmosphere.  (or rather nitrogen splits the blue component of the sun's light out, if you really want to get technical, but they basically mean the same thing)

Memories of What Never Was Chapters 21 and 22

So, there I was, a week ago, ready to put some finishing touches on these two chapters before I uploaded them to my site, aaaaaaaand hardrive failure.  Hurray for that.  That'll teach me not to backup my work each time I'm finished for the day.  So yeah, I lost both chapters completely and had to completely rewrite them from scratch and memory after I got my computer fixed and back up and running again.  And if you care to read them you can find them at the bottom of this page.

Here we have what I like to think of as a pretty good introduction to what the Lost South is actually like.  Some more of Brand's antics.  Kriss slowly becoming a bit more emotional.  And Temari's introduction.  And for like the third time, I've completely changed her personality again.  I figured that the personality I was using in the previous draft of this version didn't really fit with her backstory, and the way of speaking I had her using was really hard for me to keep consistent, so I decided to change them both to be a little more appropriate and easier for me to write.  Curse you logic, always getting in the way!!!  It's kind of one of the unwritten rules of storytelling that you don't introduce new characters beyond the halfway point of the story, that's why I introduced Jonathan when I did, and gave Baindred a few lines in the beginning, even if the only actual appearance he made was at a distance so that he couldn't really be made out, but here I am introducing Temari with only a third of the book left.  But the thing you have to take into account is that a.) I introduced the idea of her long before now b.) finding her has been the driving force for a good chunk of the story, and c.) the story doesn't end at the end of this book.  There's still two more volumes that come after it.  So I figure I'm not breaking the rule too badly. 

About 2/3 of the way done with the first draft of this book now, and I'm doing a lot of planning out how, exactly, the big battle at the end is going to play out.  It's a lot harder than you might think it would be.  There are a lot of elements that need to be considered, like how the larger picture of the battle as a whole progresses, and how the smaller story of the characters fits into it, to name the most obvious.  I'm sure the first draft of it will be terrible, but that's the beauty of first drafts, you can always go back and fix them as many times as you need to, or even toss them out completely and start over from scratch. 

Memories of What Never Was Chapter 20

So, there I was looking at the last version of this book, and at my outline.  We have our characters in one place in one chapter, and in a completely different place in the next doing something completely different without much explanation of how they got from one to the other.  So I sort of improvised a new chapter to go between them and sort of bridge them together.  Plus Raven was in need of some character development so I figured it why not do both at the same time, use a chapter of character development for Raven to bridge the gap between the two disconnected chapters.  Anyway, since this chapter wasn't planned at all, it's probably not exceptionally well put together yet, but it gets the job done for now.  If you feel the great urge to read it you can find it at the bottom of this page.

In this chapter Raven basically just sits alone and thinks about all of the horrible, awful things that have happened to him in his life.  All the things that set him on his path, and made him who he is.  He's a bit selfish and melodramatic about it, but I figure he's got a right to be.  I also decided to give one of the characters that gets introduced a bit later in this book, a character that has appeared all all versions of this story before this one, a genderswap and changed the relationship that Raven had with him/her from friendship, to teenage love.  It doesn't really change the story in any meaningful way, but it adds a bit more depth to the relationship between these two characters, and gives more opportunities for conflict and misunderstanding, which, as a writer, is always fun stuff. 

And yes, I had a 3 day weekend off of work and I only got one four page chapter written.  Oops.  But man.  It sure was nice laying around all weekend without doing anything productive.  I suppose everyone should get to do it every once in a while.

Memories of What Never Was chapters 16-19

And here's the rest of the chapters I wrote during NaNo, 16-19.  If you feel the great urge, you can find them at the bottom of this page.


These chapters are a sequence that was in the Beyond the Lost Horizon version of this story, but cut from the Eternal Chain version.  I really liked the setting, and wanted to use it again, and the idea of having to run from the Crusade too.  A lot of the story elements leading here and away from here are different though, but the gist of it is the same.  They go to this city for something, and are chased out of town by the Crusade.  And I used this sequence to add in a pretty large patch of character development for Brand and Kriss, and set a few things up for the climax.  There's a lot of Brand being Brand, which is to say, him saying any weird or random thing that comes to mind to get a rise out of Raven.  And also a bit of set up for the next book in the form of the letter.  Some of Brand's past and ultimate destiny is alluded to here as well. 

Memories of What Never Was stuffs

So I fell about 5000 words short of the 50,000 for NaNo in November.  I was pretty busy that month... and in December... and in January...  Soooooo I'm just getting around to posting the rest of the stuff I wrote in November.

So yeah, for those of you unaware, from about Veteran's Day to the beginning of February is the Christmas rush at the post office.  We deliver about 50% of all the mail for the entire year in those two and a half months.  And it's absolutely horrific.  And on top of that, I had a kidney stone so large at the end of December, that I had to have surgery to remove it.  So I haven't exactly had a ton of free time until now.

Anyway, so, I'm posting first drafts of Memories of What Never Was Chapters 10-15.  I made a few changes to chapters 10-12, hence the reposting of them.  I've also got a few more chapters that I wrote during November that I'm not posting at the moment because they need some more work before they're actually readable.  That's the problem with writing 50,000 words in a month.  A lot of the stuff you write is kinda crap.

Anyway, we've got the destruction of Florentine and the aftermath of that in these chapters.  Some world building in chapter 15 where I explain a bit about how my spiffy new magic system works in what i think is a bit of an interesting way that shows a bit of the bigger picture of the world itself.  And Chapter 14 is about a character that is new to this version of this story, though he's based on a character that was briefly in the very very first draft of the version before the last version.  I needed a way to show the conflict between the Crusade and the Black Tower, and to do that I needed a new character outside of the core group of characters that I could use to do this with.  Plus there's a rather large scale battle that takes place at the end of this book, and I needed a character that was outside of the town that it's being fought around to give perspective.  Through him I have a bigger opportunity to show just exactly what the Desolation and the Dark Times did to the world and the people living in it, as he was an adult at the beginning of it, rather than a child growing up in the aftermath like the other viewpoint characters.  He'll also play a very large role in the next two books of the trilogy.

So, if you feel the great urge to check out these chapters you can find them at the bottom of this page.  And I'll get the rest of the chapters I wrote in November up ASAP, and then continue on to the end.  There's not too terribly much left, and now that work is FINALLY dying down a bit I hope I'll actually have the time to finish up the first draft in the next month or two.