Exile Chapters 14-16 Draft 4

I've finished the 4th draft of Exile chapters 14-16 and they can be downloaded at the bottom of this page.

soooooo, these 3 chapters of Exile needed very minimal edits, which is why they are finished so fast. In fact chapters 14 and 15 have not changed very much at all since the first draft. Nice to know I at least got SOMETHING right on my first try. I sure didn't get much else right. In fact, the first draft is so incredibly bad that the word count has nearly trippled between draft 1 and a partial draft 4. The first draft was 117k words and at about 23% completion the fourth draft is just under 300k, officially the longest thing I have ever written, beating out the Ark of Zarathustra by 6k or so, and I'm not finished yet, I expect another 10-15k words added before I'm done. I am not looking forward to chopping it down to size. I want to cut 40%-50% of the word count, but I'm not sure if it's possible. I might only manage 30%, which is the best I could do with Beyond the Lost Horizon without damaging the integrity of the story.

Anyway, Chapter 14 is one of my favorites in this story. It tells all of the backstory of the world. One way that writers tell you about the history of their worlds without making it seem like a stupidly boring history lesson where none of the characters are involved in any way shape or form is to have one of the characters tell a story, so you've got a story within a story that your characters can add comments and questions to rather than a massive block of text that's not hugely relevant to what's happening. Anyway, Silmera tells the story of the Demon Queen Marael, which is a story that I wrote in high school called Heretic Twilight. Like I said in previous posts it was basically my version of what I thought the star wars prequel trilogy would be like before they came out. And seriously, George Lucas should take some lessons from ME, because that story, as badly written as it was with my incomplete high school education was a thousand times better than his crappy, mostly animated movies. It's been a long, long time since anyone said "no" to George Lucas, and someone really, really, really needs to.

So anyway, we've got this story within a story, where Silmera tells basically all of the events that happen between the third book of the Beyond the Lost Horizon trilogy until the end of Heretic Twilight. These stories are all connected because I like the idea of many different stories taking place in the same universe. in fact, that's where a lot of Spires of Infinity came from. There's always another story to tell. I have a massive explanation of this on my website so i won't go into it here. The purpose of having this chapter here is to satisfy myself in putting in a retelling of one of my better story ideas, and also to show how Silmera views her mother and wishes to be viewed by people. And she is something of an attention whore, though she'll vehemently deny it if you accuse her of it. This chapter also explains who Marael is and why people hate her so much. In the end of her reign there were a little over a hundred and forty thousand human beings left alive in the entire world because of her. Silmera does not go into this in her story, because she is trying to focus on the tragedy of how Marael's life was destroyed, not all of the horrible things that she did.

This story is one of the biggest reasons for the cautious way in which Mal deals with the Dark God. He's completely terrified of turning out like her. It's also what makes his decision in the very end to merge with the Dark God so hard. Mal needed to know the reason Marael did what she did so he could have the fear necessary to make his decisions regarding the Dark God that much harder. He knows how Marael was destroyed by the Dark God, and he knows what the Dark God did using her body after he'd taken it from her. He also learns later on just what the Dark God is capable of doing if he gains even temporary control over his body. He doesn't want to become another Demon Queen Marael, even though everything he finds on how to be rid of the Dark God forever tells him to give in to teh Dark God and let it take him. His fear is a necessary part of how his character grows to the point that he's able to make the decision that ultimately saves every life in the Four Kingdoms. Without conflict stories are boring, so he needed something that would give him the inner conflict to make his coming to that decision exciting. If there's no reason or conflict behind a huge decision like that, then people reading the story don't care what happens, feel gyped out of their time, and generally want to kick the writer for messing it up.

The other two chapters there's not much to say about. pretty much the only thing that was changed were the ways that Lilia and Silmera talk, and a few little tweaks here and there to fix text that was unclear, didn't make much sense, or had contradictions in it.

She says she's perfectly sane... but I beg to differ... a lot... seriously...

Ok, sooo I was recently in a relationship with someone who I kinda liked, and would have liked to persue further. We'd been dating for two months, maybe three. Then, all of a sudden, she just dumped me for the most retarded, completely insane reason on earth, and I'll tell you all about it.

Ok, so, I'm no stranger to the whole dating thing. I've not had many relationships in my time, but I've been in enough to know when she's just not that into me. I met this girl Claire at a bookstore, we were looking for the same book and I asked her if she'd like to go get dinner. Not exactly the smoothest of moves, I know, but it got the job done. We seemed to really hit things off. She actually understood my sense of humor, which few people do. She even thought my scruffiness was sexy, and threatened me with bodily harm if I even thought of shaving more than once a week.

We probably went out once a week for a couple months, did a lot of e-mailing an texing stupid little hearts and xoxo's to each other as retarded people in relationships often do these days, and I was really starting to think we might be going somewhere. She likes Anime, all the same book series I like, she holds American Idol and Twilight with the same contempt that I do, and as a plus, she is incredibly attractive on top of it all. She even read some of my stories and thought They were pretty good.

Now, for as long as I can remember I have always--ALWAYS--hated musicals. Any and all musicals, it doesn't matter what they're about, if I like the music or not, if it's got the most epic story ever, I just cannot stand to watch them. They drive me crazy. They're so completely and utterly pointless and I don't even know a word to describe how much I utterly despise them. I hate them so much that it actually hurts to watch them. I dunno, the part of my brain that translates song to dialog must be broken because I have a very hard time following a story when all of the characters are prancing around and singing rather than just freakin talking to each other like god intended. If I don't like a song I usually just tune it out and 99% of songs in musicals are complete and utter crap. THere are a few I like, such as Phantom of hte Opera, Les Mis, and a few others, but I still have the same problem when i try to watch them. When I do like a song I listen more to the music than the words. I've always been like that. I like to pick out the different chords and melodies and harmonies and crap like that. Yes, I know I'm weird, you don't have to tell me. How do you think i am able to play the piano by ear? I don't know a thing about reading music, but I understand music itself, if that makes any sense. So I focus more on hte music than the words and miss what's going on.

Annnnyway, Claire LOVES musicals, which is fine with me. She's allowed to like the things she likes. She hates video games, but I rather enjoy them every now and then (though much much less than I once did these days) We don't have to like ALL the same things. Well, she kept talking about her favorite, favorite movie of all time, The Musicman, and when I said I'm not really into musicals she basically forced me to sit down with her and watch it, convinced that if I saw it I'd like it. Well, guess what, I've seen it and it is a musical. Musical = hatred. But I really like her and so I was willing to suffer through it to make her happy so long as she realizes how hard it is for me to sit through things like that and keeps it to a minimum in the future.

Now, I have moderately sever ADD. When I'm doing something that I enjoy like writing, playing a video game, watching a movie that I find entertaining, I'm usually pretty good about forcing myself to sit still and pay attention. When I'm faced with something that bores me to tears I'm not so good. I tend to constantly fidget, and move around, tap my feet, drum my fingers against something. There's just something about being able to move that makes sitting through something incredibly boring bearable. Unfortunately she was all snuggled up to me, effectively keeping me in place. now, most men when they have a very, very attractive woman leaning into them are thinking something along the lines of "SCORE!!!!!!!!!" but, all I could think about was how awful that movie was, how incredibly bored I was, and how I was effectively pinned in place. It's hard to describe the pressure that builds up in a person with ADD that is forced to sit still and watch something that he is completely and utterly disinterested in watching. You can feel it building up inside of you, and it actually starts to hurt, you feel like your muscles are on fire and that you're going to explode if something interesting doesn't happen RIGHT NOW, Minutes stretch out and you swear that time is flowing at a tenth it's normal speed, and finally you just can't take it anymore and you need to stand up and move around.

I tried, rather unsucessfully, to explain how much pain I was in at having to sit still and watch her movie, and of course she took it personally. I'm not really very good at putting things into words during conversation. I get this deer caught in headlights look and kinda fumble and mumble and just don't do a very good job of explaining. But I did manage to get across to her that I was having an extremely miserable time of watching this movie. I asked if she would mind if I maybe read a book while the last hour of the movie was on and she freaked out. My neighbors are probably still talking about how she screamed at me. She kept saying how selfish I was, and how I wasn't even giving the movie a chance, and how she could never marry a man that couldn't even sit through her favorite movie with her. I sat there in sheer agony for 90 minutes just because I wanted her to be happy, and I was being selfish and not giving a movie I've already seen twice before and hated a chance?

She now refuses to answer the phone when I call. She sends her room mate out to send me away when i stop by to try to talk to her. She doesn't return any e-mails or texts. Just because I can't stand to sit through musicals she's going to throw away what might have been the most promising relationship I've ever had with a girl.

Now, the obvious answer to the question "why?" is that she just wasn't really all that into me and was looking for an excuse to break up, but she didn't give any signs beforehand. One minute she was hugging my arm like we'd been married 20 years and the next she was screaming and throwing things at me and never wanting to speak to me again. I've known some really crazy women in my time, but that's a little more than a little wierd in my experience.

Luckily, her mom really likes me and she called me to get my side of the story yesterday. Hopefully she can beat some sense into Claire and we can resolve this. I mean, I'd understand her reaction if i'd punched her cat or something, but I just said I needed something to do during a movie that was boring me so much it actually hurt. I don't get why that would be such a huge deal to anyone. I swear I've torn out half of my hair trying to figure out what the real reason for her flipping out is, because it can't possibly be the stupid movie. Why does every girl i meet have to turn out to be a freakin psycho? I mean, I should have met at least one by now that was sane by sheer probability. I've been basically just laying around all depressed all week long because of this. She was going to come to thanksgiving dinner and meet my parents, and now she won't even talk to me. It's enough to make a perfectly crazy guy like me sane. I just want to scream in frustration... but the neighbors got enough of a show last week.

Exile Chapter 13 Draft 4

I've finished the Chapter 13 of the Fourth Draft of Exile and it can be downloaded at the bottom of this page.

This is the second chapter in the sidestory of Patrick and Weasel. It's pretty long, like all of their chapters will be. There is a lot of material that needs to be included in these chapters to basically make is so people care what happens to these people by the end of the story, but I don't want to take too much attention away from the main storyline with Mal and Silmera. So I decided that I would do 5 or 6 really long chapters and put them into likely places in the main storyline where things are a bit slow to jazz things up with a switch between locations and characters rather than 10 or 12 normal sized chapters that pull you away from the main storyline and are more of a distraction than a good subplot. That's sort of the definition of a subplot after all, something going on in the background that's somehow important to the ending, but doesn't take attention away from the main storyline.

So, anyway, this chapter was new to draft 3, and as that was basically the first draft of it, it needed a crapton of work in this draft. This chapter is entirely from Weasel's point of view, and shows the turmoil in life between grief and anger at her husband's murder, and her dead son, and her loss of ability to procreate, replaced by her need to kill Samirreh as brutally as possible, stabbing them repeatedly so she can watch the light go out of their eyes and feel their blood on her hands. The need sets into her and she has to kill or it actually physically hurts her. She's starting to lose control of herself and her darker urges, and having fond thoughts of killing not only her enemies, but also her friends as well. The only things that can calm her are cutting herself and focusing on the pain, or being near Patrick, which she still sees as a betrayal to her dead husband. There are so many comflicting things bouncing around inside of her that it's literally driving her mad. She's a really fun character to write because she's just so incredibly messed up. It almost seems that a character this crazy is too far gone to ever find redemption, which only makes it that much better when she does in the end.

Anyway, since we don't have much time with these characters I almost have to overexaggerate their personalities in order to get across who they are and what they're doing so you don't forget between this chapter and the next about them. It's kind of a thin line to walk between overdoing it, and enough to get the point across.

In this chapter we see a lot more of what it's like living in the Samirreh occipied Four Kingdoms outside of the Hidden Valley. People huddle together in hidden villages and pray that the Samirreh don't notice them, or that the army they supply will be close enough to help them if they do. Disaster can strike at any moment, and they live constantly in fear of being discovered, because if they are, they'll meet a very brutal end.

Also, in this chapter I've had Patrick be the one to discover what the Samirreh are doing in conquering the Four Kingdoms in such a roundabout, indirect way rather than just sweeping straight across and slaughtering everyone. They're carving a magical symbol into the land in blood, which Fayt Nightfang will use at the end to become a God and bring his beloved dead wife back from the grave. I thought that it was important for someone other than Aaron to figure this out, because Aaron, for all his good intentions, is not very bright, and he never completed his training as a Wizard. He's something of an underachiever, only doing as little work as he possibly can and still get by, hence the reason he didn't press Mal's father for the right to teach Mal to control the Dark God, and why he caves in so easily to Silmera's manipulations. He doesn't have the patience, motivation, or intelligence to do more than he's already doing. Not to say he's a complete lazy idiot, he's just got all he can handle on his plate already with trying to coordinate between hundreds of bands of soldiers scattered across the whole continent and come up with a feasible plan to defeat the Samirreh. Plus, I wanted to show that Patrick is a lot smarter than the average farmboy. He's a genius, and it's not just war and strategy he's studied. He studied just about any subject he could get his hands on, desperate to find something, anything, that would get him away from his father's farm and his destiny to spend the rest of his life working on it. So having him see a pattern that the Wizard missed emphasizes that he is a genius and Aaron is not.

Also, i show in this chapter that for all his genius, patrick is only human. He is completely and utterly exhausted, so much so that he didn't even notice Weasel was there talking to him. Being a legendary general and keeping one step ahead of the Samirreh is taking a lot out of him, and he doesn't really have any way to relieve his stress. Markus, though a reasonably good friend, holds him with the same sense of awe that the rest of his army does. The only person that doesn't do that is Weasel, and she refuses his every advance, which only frustrates him and adds to the stress he's already got. He needs someone that will listen to him, care for him, and hold him when he needs it, and she's the only likely candidate, but she's got so many of her own problems, including not wanting to betray her dead husband by being with another man, that she is trying desperately to hold him at arm's length, which is kind of her only lifeline. They both want and need each other, but her dead husband is continually standing between them.

Urge to kill rising... rising... snuffed out by a cupcake...

Ok, soooo, you're driving along and up ahead you see police lights flashing to the side of the road. Some poor sap got caught doing what you were probably doing before you saw the lights. You'd love nothing more than to leave the flashing lights behind because they're strobing into your soul, which is rather uncomfortable, but you can't, because all of a sudden the people in front of you have slowed down to 15 below the speed limit, blocking all 3 lanes of traffic.

I can't even begin to count the number of things that are wrong with this picture, but I'll try.

First of all, and most importantly, the police officer is ALREADY DOING SOMETHING, and he isn't going to look up, see you drive past and dive into his car to pull you over, nor is he going to call on the radio to another officer to come after you. They work in a grid sort of pattern, the cop you see is the only one in the area until you cross into another cop's area unless there is an emergency or someone calls for one.

Second, HE'S NO GOING TO PULL YOU OVER FOR GOING THE SPEED LIMIT!!! A police officer is not going to pull you over for going the posted speed limit even if he isn't already busy pulling someone else over. It is against the law for him to do so.

Thirdly, If you are going more than 10 MPH below the speed limit when there is no obstacle in your path it is considered reckless endangerment which is a misdemeanor in the state of utah. (thank you to my uncle John the not so friendly highway patrolman for giving me the info ^^V) By going slower than the rest of the traffic around you you create a hazzardous obstacle to the other drivers. If you were to be pulled over for this, you would be required to make a court appearance, and depending on the judge you could actually serve jail time FOR GOING TO SLOW. Guess who's gonna be his bunk mate's... mate. Definitely not the dude in for assault and battery, it's the guy who's in for driving too slow. The minimum punishment if you are found guilty of reckless endangerment is a pretty hefty fine.

Fourth, if you're slowing down just to get a better look at someone else's suffering, you're both an idiot and a dick. What if a little old lady decided to cross the road while you're not paying attention and BAM, you've got little old lady splattered all over your windshield? What then? You just killed someone because you're an idiot and a dick. How do you feel now?

So, if you see someone pulled over, don't be a retard and slow down to 15 MPH below the limit.

yada yada yada and a carp in a business suit

Sooooooooo, day after thanksgiving... I hate my job sometimes... *dies*

Anyway, I got my hands on the sequel to I am not a Serial Killer by Dan Wells, titled Mr. Monster, and he's managed to pull off something that few writers ever do. The unplanned sequal capitalizing on the success of the original is actually better than the first one. The main character is even creepier and frightening as he struggles with the monster he unleashed in himself to hunt down and kill the supernatural killer that was murdering people in his little town in the middle of nowhere. Now that he's let it out of the box he's found that he can't put it back in, and all his careful rules to keep himself from hurting other people and becoming a serial killer himself aren't helping, his dark side is just too strong, but luckily another supernatural killer has found his way to the same town looking for his old friend only to find him dead and has started his own rampage in order to lure out the one that did it, giving him a conveniant target for all of his dark urges and needs.

What made this book better than the first one is that there is a whole lot more internal struggle in John, the protagonist and the one telling the story, you can see him suffering and living every moment in terror over what his dark side might do, and watch as the dark side slowly takes over from being a voice in the back of his mind telling him to do things and leaves him the voice of reason in the back of his mind desperately trying to stop himself. The moment when they change places is really creepy, it was awesome. It's really well done, and the fact that the killer is a supernatural being doesn't hit you like a brick like it did in the first one because it's already been establihed that these things exist before. So, if you took my recomendation on the first one and liked it, the second one is better and i recomend it even more.

Also, as I've said many times before, I was highly dissatisfied with the star wars prequel trilogy. I've found a website run by a dude that reviews crappy movies that ruin previously awesome franchises. He has a star wars episode 1 review and a star wars episode 2 review with a star wars episode 3 review forthcoming. They are both rather long, a little over an hour for the first and an hour and a half for the second, but they are completely and utterly hilarious, and the dude puts into words the burning hatred for what George Lucas has done to one of my favorite movie series almost exactly as i would have had I done movie reviews on them. He mirrors my thoughts so perfectly I could almost swear I'd written the reviews myself and forgotten about it. Check them out if you've got the time, they're great for more than a few laughs.

Exile chapter 12 and Thanksgiving

I've finished Chapter 12 of the fourth draft of Exile and it can be downloaded at the bottom of this page.

Very little has changed in this chapter, just a few more graphic details of what Heretic blood does to a person, and a few small things about the Hidden Valley a thousand years ago as compared to now.

And of course, Happy Thanksgiving to all, except the Canadians, because they act all superior to Americans because their thanksgiving is three months earlier in the year. Screw you Canadia! That's right, I said Canadia instead of Canada. It's only a matter of time before Glenn Beck decides, in his infinite stupidity, that you're the 51st state anyway and you'll have to celebrate thanksgiving on the 3rd thursday of November like civilized human beings. Just you wait, you've only got crappy healthcare and watered down beer to look forward to for all eternity, and your snotty french people can kiss our sombreros, because Spanish is the language spoken by third class citizens here biatches! (note, that was a joke in poor taste about how horribly hispanic immigrants are treated in the USA, not a statement of fact)

P.S. mmmmmmmmmmmm pie.

Exile Chapter 10&11 Draft 4

I've finished chapters 10 and 11 of the fourth draft of Exile and they can be downloaded at the bottom of this page.

There are some moderate changes in these chapters from the last draft posted. Mostly these changes have to do with Silmera's motivations and suicidal thoughts. In my effort to make the characters into believeable people I've delved much deeper into Silmera's reasons for doing what she's doing. An english professor of mine always used to say that to write a believeable character you have to first know what their secret is. Everyone has a secret, and most of the time it helps to define who they are as a person. Silmera's secret is that she wants to die. She knows that this is wrong, so she is desperately seeking a reason to keep going. She's had a whole thousand years of fruitless labor and people still hate her for who and what she is. She can't take it anymore and just wants it to end.

I've also thrown in a few references to how different the world is now from the way it was when she was a child. She gives the impression from her thoughts that the world she grew up in a thousand years ago during and just after the War of Zion is much like our own modern day.

The story that the War of Zion is based on takes place in a world that is a blending of sci-fi and fantasy, there are laser guns, floating cities, and flying cars, but there is also magic and people who still use swords as a ceremonial weapon rather than a practical one. It's kinda like star wars without space travel, which is kinda what I was going for when I wrote it. After the war the technology began to decline rapidly because so much of the population had been killed in such a short time that few people remained that could build, repair and invent new technology. By the time Silmera was 20 years old things had degraded enough that all of the sci-fi technology had pretty much disappeared and was replaced with things like you would find in our world and time, and that is what she is fondly, and not so fondly, remembering.