As a few people may have noticed or heard, Legends of Windemere isn’t my first rodeo with publishing. I self-published a book I wrote in high school. It was a 191-page science-fiction adventure heavily influenced by comic books and cartoons. I could only afford to fix about 325 of the typos, so it is far from perfect. At the time, I believed the editor would fix everything and then I learned that I had final say. I also learned that the company would charge me extra if I went over 325 typos. Lesson learned, book was out, book failed miserably, series was tossed aside for Windemere, what I liked was cannibalized into Windemere, and that was the end of it.
Then Ionia Martin found and reviewed it. This was followed by Saunved and Tuan Ho asking for copies. All of this has made me wonder about my first series. I really can’t continue it for a few reason:
- The plot involved guardians of the planets back when Pluto was a planet. I try again now and I have a character and magic weapon that don’t have a home. The alternative is that I have the Pluto guardian be the bad guy who is angry over being fired, but that’s a little too topical for me.
- Adriana, the main villain, moved to Windemere and plays a major role in one of my future series. It’s so important that I can’t pull her out and I don’t feel right changing her name. She’s my oldest surviving character and changing anything on her feels like an insult.
- The original idea had space vampires. I still cringe when I remember that.
- I combined everything into Windemere, so the entire Solar System guardians wouldn’t work here. I’d need to redo it all.
Many times when I get into this type of situation, I do a mental conference with the characters involved. Unfortunately, this big decision involved all of them and that was just a mess of a mental process. Here’s an example of it went like before I fully explain:
Marvel vs DC
Started off civil until the immortals realized they were getting shafted a bit. Hydrana decked Nyx with a water blast, Luke decked Fate, Clyde started beating Mindtrigger with Cybro’s severed arm, and that was just the opening salvo. Adriana had the decency to stay out of it since she was connected to both sides. I have no idea where Darwin wandered off to after put a few aliens to sleep. Zaria did try to calm everyone down until somebody clocked her in the back of the head with an energy blast. I’m still not even sure if that came from the opposing side because I could so see Gabriel taking the opportunity to hit her from behind. Magic, swords, lasers, and all manner of weapons were flying during this ‘discussion’. It got so bad that I had to switch to ‘Disturbed’ to fit the mood.
Not sure who said it, but one of the immortals did point something out before getting an axe to the face. Downside of being immortal is that your enemies have very little care about deathblows because you’ll be fine in a few hours. Anyway, the poor, faceless character mentioned that the immortals were here first. That’s true. They are my first fully designed characters. I hate to say I grew out of them, but I can’t find a place for them in the new world. Adriana made the jump and Hydrana found a home for a little while. The other weren’t so lucky.
The answer of course is to play this out. What if the original beings of Windemere were these immortals and the gods realized that having immortal followers put them at risk? Maybe the war between the immortals threatened the entire world and they were put away because they could only be killed by other immortals. The gods, immortal though they be, weren’t the same kind of immortal, so they didn’t have that power. A design flaw if ever there was one. All I needed was a series to put them into and a story to form in my head.
Well, this sounded incredibly epic, so my eyes immediately fell on Sin . . . once I could find the crafty bastard. His series are long 4-act adventures with multiple levels of villains, ancient evils, and new allies in every book. Part of his story is that he’s unknowingly in the competition to be the new God of Death and each villain in his currently 8-book series embodies a sin. The final book deals with a character that embodies all 7. This does make adding a ninth book a pain because it throws off the embodiment thing unless I can find a way around it. Basically, my idea is for Sin to discover the immortals, side with the heroes to stop the evil immortals, accidentally make all of them see that they’re in the same boat, and then be sent off alone (a first for him actually) to kill all of them once and for all. If any character can figure out how to do that, it’d be Sin. Maybe Clyde, but who wants to read an entire book on a vampire beating people until they stop twitching. At least Sin has some style and panache.
Does this turn all of my immortals (minus Adriana) into bad guys? To some extent, but you can’t fault them for growing bitter over the years. I tossed them aside to run with my fantasy world. At least this way, I can bring them in and give them some type of story. Maybe one or two will survive. Now to research the seven deadly sins to find a way to fit this 9th book into the mix.
Legends of Windemere 
I didn’t get many of the names you poured out here. I hope reading “The Summoning” will solve that for me. I will make sure I review it for you! 😀
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Some of the names are from The Summoning while others are from Legends of Windemere. A few are from future series, but they’ve been mentioned in a post or two. This should clear up the Clyde, Sin, and Darwin confusion: https://legendsofwindemere.com/2013/02/08/origin-week-finale-the-four/
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Thanks for the link. Will look into it 😀
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Haha, oh boy you’re going to be busy. Busy is good. 🙂
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That it is. Just hope they give me enough time to get everything prepped. Though, I stumbled onto a way to fix the Sin series issue. Could just have the immortals’ inclusion be an example of ‘sins of the father’ since they kind of are sins of the gods/creators.
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I opened a can of worms eh?
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Only with people requesting copies. Every few months, I toy with the idea of phasing some version of Immortal Wars into Windemere. I might have actually figured it out if I go with the route I’m considering. All depends on how it plays out in my head. Might include another Callindor in the story too.
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Sounds like a pretty cool book, Charles! 🙂
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Thanks . . . Immortal Wars or Sin? Because I’m still groaning about the space vampire idea from Immortal Wars. That should drop my cool creds down a few notches.
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Immortal Wars is what I was talking about. I like the space vampire idea! Very original and awesome!
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Yeah . . . it really wasn’t. He was nothing more than Dracula with the ability to fly through space without a helmet. I even gave him a widow’s peak haircut and a black cape. I never made it to his book, but it really was terrible. Worse than daylight disco ball vampires.
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Disco ball Dracula sounds interesting! And besides, your first published book is supposed to be horrible: it sets the standard for the rest of your writing career. (That’s why I made sure to self-publish one of my less-than-favorite books before “Me and Billy the Kid” was released! LOL) 😉
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Good point. Disco ball Dracula has already been done. He’s called Edward Cullen. 😉
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Oh, that’s a good one! LOL
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Thanks. That’s all I can think of when I hear sparkling vampires. Well, that and vampire strippers.
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Hmm, I’m not sure how to respone to that. It’s probably best for me to just drop it and leave it alone. 🙂
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Definitely safer for all involved. 🙂
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Haha, I’m going to have to agree with you!
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Interesting editing process on that book. My editor fixed everything, or tried to.
I think it could be cool to have more than one series going at the same time.
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It was a pay-for-publishing company, so they had various packages. I couldn’t afford the better editing, so I went with what I had.
I’m going to have to do the two series at once at some point. At the very least, stop one and move to another to keep the world’s continuity. One series spans a long time period, so it crossover with a few other series. I’d have to stop and do the other ones to avoid spoilers.
As for Immortal Wars, I guess it’s a shame that I can’t go on with it. I’d have to gut it and change everything. The later books were a mess with so many characters dying, being brought back, and dying again. Every character dies at least twice, but I had a character who can resurrect the dead and I abused that ability like a beginner. Live and learn on that one.
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I loved Immortal Wars, plus I still have my copy of it on my shelf 🙂
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Thanks, but I’m sure that’s more because you couldn’t pay someone to take that book. 😉
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