Rough that isn’t going to be over for a bit. Let’s leave that part at that. For anyone that has a clue of what’s going on with me or reads back a few days, you can probably tell what’s about to happen in my world. Sorry for the vagueness, but I don’t feel comfortable saying the details.
Now, this whole thing came on the heels of me eying my book series list. For now, I have 45 series and one-shot stories in various stages of design. Only 2 are unconnected to Windemere, but I think they might have a few strings attached. Still, this is a lot for me to juggle. Back when it was Super Earth, Windemere, and Independent worlds, I was going nuts with keeping everything straight. Then I merged everything into Windemere and mysteries of the world were solved. Still, other problems came about like a few stories that still haven’t fit or are being difficult. I’m looking at you, Project Phoenix! God, why won’t you fucking behave and let me figure you out?
This means I need to restructure. A few ideas are interesting, but they might be more background of the world without books. Everthorne isn’t necessary considering how few times the city is involved in events. Cup of Setna explains the Great Cataclysm and the Lightbringer’s origin, but all of that gets explained during the Elysium Saga. Do I really have to dive into it twice? Gods’ Fall is another one that shows the origin of the Law of Influence. It was more of a vehicle for me to give Zaria a chance to shine, but it’s muddling her a bit. These ideas are talked about and probably work best as world information that connects to other stories. Heck, I seem to have Sin delve into all this stuff and he has two new books in the series that need flushing out. Maybe he’ll get some of this.
Other ideas are simply not working and I keep forgetting about them. Charioteers and Genevieve Archer are after-thoughts at best. I nearly forgot them when I was listing things. Many of these might be dropped completely if I haven’t touched them in years or don’t feel strong about them. This is the easy category.
Then we have the problem children. A handful of ideas that are strong in my mind, but I don’t know what to do with them. Several of them might get absorbed into Project Phoenix if I settle on having no central plot for those books and simply tell the various tales of the Mylrixians who have been awaken. Others I really need to figure out like Sutyra and Jack. Those two series are fun to think of, but I need to decide on what they’re going to do. Expect some of the survivors to become W.I.P. posts asking for advice. The trouble is Windemere is being difficult for some of the transfers and I’m having trouble letting go. Brian Hunter is a fun character that depended on technology to be a spy and I made him a great niche in Windemere. The only gun-using character in my menagerie and I keep stumbling on his story because I won’t leave the past behind.
It’s a headache that I need to sit down with. I used to pester friends with this, but they’re busy and some people are becoming ‘Yes Men’. This isn’t even the challenge of the newest idea that I might post about on Sunday. All a mess, I tell you. All a freaking mess.
Legends of Windemere 
Hummm. Don’t want to be a Yes man, but what can I do to help?
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I’m still sorting through how I can recruit help on this. I think I have to go through it first. It’s just a lot of work and focus. Over the years, I’ve connected all of these series to each other and interwove this whole world. Now I have to find the weak parts and figure out what to do. I’ll be posting W.I.P. posts once or twice a week to help get insight into how something sounds.
The big ideas that are core to the overall story of Windemere’s Age of Heroes are solid. These peripherals are the tough ones. They aren’t essential beyond giving me more heroes and villains to work with for the final battle of Windemere book. Maybe I overdid the planning while I was waiting for an agent to take a chance on me. Followed every imaginary trail my mind created and the result is a tangled web of madness.
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Madess is goodness.
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It gets one a room with mattresses on the walls. 🙂
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and food through a tube.
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Only if you misbehave. Beyond that it’s all soft foods without utensils.
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I figured you for a disruptive patient
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Nah. I’d catch up on sleep and am easily entertained by a pen and paper.
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It sounds like your literary world is a bit of a mess. Maybe in the end all of the stories don’t need to necessarily be tied together, some may just be standalone books, but of course that is something that you will need to decide. If there is anything I can do to help in any way just ask.
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The connections for some are simply in the same world or visit a place that plays a roll in another series. I’ve always found it strange when you have multiple series in one location and they seem to never effect each other unless a specific crossover happens. This happens a lot in comics and how some heroes always run into the same villains and never seem to stumble onto the villains of another hero in the same city.
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“Cup of Setna explains the Great Cataclysm and the Lightbringer’s origin, but all of that gets explained during the Elysium Saga. Do I really have to dive into it twice?”
Not unless you want to. Involved readers will keep up with the continuity.
One thing I didn’t like about the author that plagiarized himself, Steven Ambrose, was that I bought multiple books, and he didn’t tell me that large parts were reprinted from his other books. I felt ripped off. His tales were interesting and true, but I didn’t want to read word for word in multiple books that I paid for expecting new content…
It’s your house, bro.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXuvdeEC5y8
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Some of the stories do feel like pointless ones because so much gets revealed during the course of another series. I think it takes away from the suspense. It’s entirely different from the pre-Cataclysm stories that don’t get more than occasional mentions.
I would find that self plagiarization annoying as reader. I wouldn’t try that. Thankfully, the history ones are easy to melt into information that gets brought up in other series. The stories that I’m having trouble fitting are going to be tough. It’s like there is a single piece missing and I haven’t looked under the right couch cushion yet.
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It’s a greyish balance, you can recover same events as long as there’s enough new content.
The other authors content was literally chapters of straight reprint. And I have a good memory and knew I’d read it word for word before. I felt ripped off of 29.99 actually.
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Ouch. At that price, I don’t blame you. I can see how that tactic would work in a series where each book is a different character in the same events. Crossover scenes could be reprinted, but there should be a warning about that.
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Yeah, it wasn’t long after I read the books that the plagiarization charges surfaced about him. It was after his death though as I recall rightly.
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That’s an easy way to get out of it. Though, is it plaigarization if it’s his own works? Sounds like a grey area.
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Yeah, He had about 30% of a “new” book filled with old reprinted material that wasn’t plainly advertised as “reprinted”.
Whole chapters verbatim. Not just a retelling of old story from fresh angle.
Literal word for word.
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That’s a lot. I’m wondering what the point of that would be. Is every book around the same events?
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Fairly so. He chronicled war stories of WW2 on a personal level.
So a particular chapter would be a particular person or units story of a particular battle.
Each chapter could be a different person, or battle or other event pulled from the history of WW2.
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That could do it. Still, a little difference would make more sense. I’m not a reader or writer of history stories, so I don’t know what goes into them.
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I think the point was to reach a page limit haha. Not really sure, that’s my surmise.
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Good old filler. The author’s temptation.
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Ruined his rep after his deah though pretty much. Once people started suspecting plagiarism, then having a reason to look for it.
I enjoyed his books, reread them, but didn’t enjoy rereading content I didn’t know I’d be rereading, hehe.
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It’s a destruction move that is easily caught. Especially if you try to hide it. Bad way to learn that lesson.
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Better to have too many ideas than too few (like none). Some great writers had this problem because they came up with fantastic ideas faster than they could carry them out and make them work, but very often when they finished a book, it was very good. 🙂
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Good to hear and I like that way of thinking.
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Uh oh. Does that make me a Yes man? 🙂
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Only if you say every idea I have is gold. I’ve caught onto that trick.
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Everyone has a different approach, of course, and it sounds like you do far more planning than I do. Still, I do wonder why it really matters. My approach would be to file away those ideas that aren’t fully realized and to keep the others as vague outlines at best. It could be years before you tackle many of the books you’re talking about and by then you may have changed your mind on how you want to proceed. My gosh, by then you’ll be a different writer/person than you are now. That would then mean you’ve wasted this time. That’s my take; it isn’t criticism, just a different approach and you seemed to be wanting different viewpoints. The best of luck no matter what you do.
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Thanks. It’s actually been years since I looked at a few of these. The reason is that I work on the future stories to take a break from the current one. Sounds weird, but it helps me refocus. Most of these ideas are interconnected in some way too. Cameos, same cities, etc. So, a change in one can affect the others. This is why I have to go back to them when I realize something has to be altered. A few times I have to check the notes on future series to make sure I’m not messing them up with my current one. It’s complicated.
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It sounds complicated, but I understand. More importantly, you understand. I hope you perfect your system.
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I think I understand. Though I might need a chainsaw to fix some of these things. I did a half-hearted combining and absorption thing a few months ago. I need to put effort in.
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Sounds like a handful of these characters need to be re-branded(or re-world-ed-ed, what is the correct verbage here?) 😉 and given their own stand alone series. Maybe after book 5 of Windemere you take some time away from Windemere and focus on that stand alone series, or a few off shoot books. That will give Windemere time to simmer, allow the fans to get all frothy and rabid for book 6 while you refresh your creative juices and mind working on new content.
Then go back and look at it with fresh eyes and mind, then surgically remove any other excess characters that right now seem to be imperative to the story, but with fresh eyes will be revealed to be fluff.
I think I might be a Yallowitz yes man, though since I am an admitted Yallowitz fanboy, and President and Founder of the Yallowitz fan club(we have stickers! that makes us official) I will never apologize for it! 😀 Ionia is Treasurer and in charge of cookie distribution.
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Sadly, I can’t do a lot of these series until Legends of Windemere is over. Spoilers would be revealed since the surviving heroes of this series make cameos. I’m using weekends to work some of this out. It’s not so much a re-branding, but a shifting the puzzle pieces into the right place. I haven’t really gone over the list in months, so the fresh eye thing is what I’m doing now. I can already tell that 5 series are going to be dropped and several are going to be placed under an umbrella series. Time is needed to work on it.
A lot of this might be stemming from me combining everything into Windemere and not thinking all of them through. I focused more on the big series than the fun, little ones that have no weight in the grand plot of the entire world.
You realize Ionia is only the Treasurer because she hasn’t tried to topple you off the throne, right? She’s biding her time.
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I bribe her with cookies. Our relationship is based on a mutual love of chocolate chips and golden brown cookie dough.
Has the world grown to large to handle? Sometimes even the grandest trees need to be pruned back a little in order to live longer.
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Tread carefully. She might grow too powerful for cookies and then you’ll need muffins.
The world has grown big. Not too big to handle though. More like a giant garden that I left unattended for too long and mistook dandelions for the pretty flowers. Seriously, I have this nagging feeling that the answer is right in front of me.
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Ha! Let the toddler sort it out! Kids these days are much smarter than we were at that age, or even than we are now. Problem solved. 😀
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He tried to take a crayon to my notes. I had to demote him to Vice President of Trains in another department.
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Ugh, I feel your pain to a very small degree. That’s a lot to juggle! 😯
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Sure is. Worst part is that I remember 5 other story ideas after I made the post. Might be at 50 by this point. I think I’m going to leave this project for next weekend.
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Probably a good idea, I get a head ache just thinking about it, can’t imagine having all that in my head!
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The trick is to go with the flow. Fighting it just leads to frustration and getting things tangled up.
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