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.

Memories of What Never Was Chapter 12 Draft 1

Memories of What Never Was Chapter 12 Draft 1 can be found at the bottom of this page if you feel so inclined to read it.

This chapter has Kriss and Brand getting to know each other.

NaNo Word Count: 5165 (right on track so far)

Memories of What Never Was Chapter 11 Draft 1

So I took a couple weeks off writing because work has been somewhat ridiculous, and to save up a bit of energy for this years NaNoWriMo thingy.  I figured I might as well use it as a stick to prod myself to finish up the first draft of this rewrite.  So, seeing as how today is the first day of November, and the competition is on, I've finished Chapter 11 of the first draft of Memories of What Never Was and if you so fee the great urge to read it, you can do so by clicking here

For anyone unfamilliar with it, National Novel Writing Month is an internet self challenge that happens every November (Nanowrimo.org if you wanna join in, or find out more).  Basically, everyone starts out with the same goal, write 50,000 words in a single month.  That may seem like a lot, or not that much to some people.  For reference, a normal, mainstream novel is usually about 90,000-100,000 words long, A young adult book is usually around 75,000-90,000 words long, with stuff like epic fantasy novels being more like 200,000.  So, basically, it's a self challenge to get yourself half or more done with the first draft of a book in a single month.  And there are prizes for everyone that finishes.  Seeing as how I already had a little over 45,000 words written, I figure I can get pretty close to finishing the first draft this month if, work allowing, I keep up with it.  We'll see what happens.

So, with this chapter I introduce a new little idea I had with Brand in this latest version of this story.  I figure the prophecy of the chosen one who will save the world has been done to death if fiction, so I took that and turned it on it's head.  Brand is actually the one who is prophesied to destroy the world, and he's got heroes and champions coming out of the woodwork to try and murder him everywhere he goes to save the world from him.  I came up with this idea around 3 AM or so while suffering from insomnia and thought it was clever.  We'll see if it actually turns out to be clever or not once I'm done.  It's just that there's so many stories out there about the chosen one who will save the world, including the original version of this one, and I sat there and thought to myself, well what about the other guy, you know, the one he's supposed to be saving the world from.  Also there's a bit more character development for Kriss here.


NaNo Progress: 3100 words

Memories of What Never Was Chapter 10 Draft 1

So I made some very minor edits to Chapters 2, 3 and 7 so I re-uploaded those to my site, and I also finished up my first draft of chapter 10, you can find them at the bottom of this page.

this chapter has a pretty huge amount of character development in it.  It basically is what gives Brand his reason to fight, and shows Kriss and Raven just how evil the people they've been hunting down for the last 7 years truly are.  The rest of Brand's powers and abilities are shown off here, as well as the consequences he faces for using them, and Kriss' power is really given it's first real showing here as well. 

Memories of What Never Was Chapters 7, 8 and 9 Draft 1

So, there I was, writing full speed ahead with the new changes I planned to make to the story, and then I got to the big opening action scene and went... huh...  So, I knew that I wanted to have an action scene, and a few things that I wanted to happen during it, but I had no idea how to string those things together into an actual scene.  It took me a while to figure it out and get it written.  Well, there was that, and the new deal that the Post Office made with Amazon where we are now delivering 80% of their packages in the USA instead of the 20% we had been before the deal.  This deal basically saved the post office from bankrupsy prety much completely, so I know I really shouldn't complain about it, but I've been working 2-3 extra hours every day because of it, and with all of the bigger, heavier packages I've suddenly been getting, and all the carrying them to doors and stuff, it's really been wearing me out, and when I get home, the last thing I've been wanting to do is sit down and work out what's going to happen in this action scene.  But I'm getting used to the extra work now, and I finally just sat down and plowed through it this weekend.

Soooooo, I've got the first drafts of Memories of What Never Was Chapters 7, 8 and 9 posted on my website, and you can read them by clicking Here.

Hopefully, now that I'm past the part I was stuck on for so long, I can finally get back into a more regular writing schedule and churn out more chapters more quickly.  For the most part, the rest of the book isn't going to play out much differently than the first rewrite attempt did.  There will be a couple of added things here and there, but mostly, it's going to follow the same flow.  I'll probably be rewriting a lot of it, changing up the prose and such, but for the most part, the events will stay the same.