I'm Writing A Lot

Hello there! It's been a while since my last post, but for somewhat of a good reason: there wasn't a whole lot to talk about. But now there is! And so I will spill the beans.

Writing: During the two weeks my family was on vacation, I wrote a total of 11,068 words, which was fantastic! Obviously not as much as I could have gotten done, but a significant amount when compared to what I usually get done. In that time, I wrote a short story to its completion (Annoyance In The Air, which needs some revision, but should be finished soon), and another short story almost to its completion before I realized that I was going to have to scrap the whole thing because it was way too complicated to be a short story. I also got closer to completing Spend A Winter In Hell, but got stuck on the ending of that, and am going to run it by some people to get their input, and false started another short story that turned out to also be too complicated (this is me trying to put too many magic powers in a short story), but did provide a springboard for a very interesting character arc that I'll use later.

Since then, I've been doing some editing on short stories and my novella, while worldbuilding and outlining for my NaNoWriMo novel, To Look Skyward. I still have a lot of worldbuilding to do before I'll be completely satisfied with everything I need to know about the world, but tomorrow is when NaNoWriMo starts, so I'll have to be quick about that if I want it done before I have to start putting words to paper. All in all, though, I'm very satisfied with how the outlining process has been going. I've done more outlining than I usually do on a project (but recently it has all been shorter stories, so there's that), and I think the first half of the story is pretty solid in terms of story structure as a result. The last half, though... I still need to work on that. I have a feeling that once I hit that I'll either have a wonderful shot of inspiration and figure out the direction I need to go...or I'll need to brainstorm with my writer friends about where the heck I'm supposed to go with it.

Just as an aside, I also came up with a very interesting short story idea a couple days ago, as a result of one of the writing sprints for a NaNo Write-in. I didn't have time to go into it very fully, as I needed to focus on To Look Skyward, but I'm excited to write that in December sometime.

Music: Well, it looks like my plan to go to a recording studio in October has been postponed, because of crazy schedules on both sides, and so that's not going to happen until sometime later. But that's okay. I have recording equipment that suits my needs, and a good program to work with, so I can have fun with demos for now. I've been slowly but surely working on A Promise To Write's demo, but it still needs more work before I'll be satisfied with it. I did make an acoustic demo of my newest song, entitled "The Girl", and so there's that. I really like this song, so hopefully soon I'll release it somewhere. I also have the opportunity to play one of my original songs (with the rest of the worship band accompanying me) at my church this Sunday, so that's exciting. I'll be playing Somebody Has To Start, which is one of my favorites that I've written.

I'm planning on recording a rather special song in early December (after the craziness of NaNoWriMo dies down), but it's a secret as to what it's ultimate goal is, so I will not say anything more.

Reading: If you're at all interested in what I'm reading right now, you can follow me on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/Xcarthan12 -- as of now I'm reading through a bunch of different books, some non-fiction, but mostly fiction. Part of that is my annual reread of the Belgariad and the Malloreon series by David Eddings, ten books of absolute awesomeness that formed a significant portion of my childhood.

Listening: So, the other day, I fell in love with a New Zealander composer named Rhian Sheehan. You should go check out his music. Right now. It's so beautiful. http://rhiansheehan.bandcamp.com/

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Well, that's about all, so I'll sign off. Hopefully this is interesting to you in some way.

Writing and Representation

For people wondering why I am intensely interested in writing fantasy (as you can probably tell from just reading a few of these blog posts), here are some clarifications.

Well, to put it simply, I love it. Fantasy is my favorite genre of fiction, and has been for a long, long time now. I read fantasy almost constantly, and enjoy the possibilities and intricacies of the genre immensely.

For those of you who don't know, what my friends and I have done is created a fantasy universe with an overarching story in which to separately write different books in said universe. We all have our separate novels and series' planned, all set in the same galaxy and connecting to the larger story.

And we have magic. Contrary to popular belief, magic in fiction is not evil. Obviously, magic in the real world is a bad thing, because God expressly forbids it--and because there are demons behind it. But "magic" in the fantasy setting we've created (and almost every fantasy setting ever created) is simply a way of having the characters do things that normal people can't do. It isn't evil--it's simply a part of their world.

Now, there are demons in the setting as well. They aren't really demons in the real sense of the word, rather a race of beings that was corrupted by the main baddie of the universe, a guy we named Chaos. But these demons represent the real thing, and are an active and dangerous part of the universe, tempting and corrupting people. It is established very early on that these demons are evil, and the powers they give people are also evil.

The premise of the story is a battle between Good and Evil. The fine details of the plot have yet to be put in stone, but the basic story revolves around this battle. "God", as in the real God that is the Creator of our universe, is not in this galaxy (at least, I don't think so, we haven't actually ironed out the details yet), but we have set up our books to be allegories (though very subtle ones) about different spiritual truths and moral problems.

For example, one of the worlds in the galaxy has a type of magic that revolves around truth and lies. The basis of the novel written on that world is going to be focused on the morality of truth. My own series, The Proanadi, is built to be a representation of the journey of redemption, along with a lot of other spiritual truths about friendship, revenge, and other things.

As a Christian, I understand that the only thing that really matters in this world is serving Jesus, serving others, and telling others about Jesus. And I want to do this by writing books. I want to give people good entertainment, but get them thinking about spiritual truths and moral issues, as well as allegories that represent things about Jesus and other spiritual things. And I want to write fiction in which the junk that permeates our society now is nonexistent. I want to show people that you can write books without swearing and sex scenes. And that it will actually be better without it.

But that's just me.

The Rules of Creation

My brother Connor, my best friend Trevor, and I got together one day almost a year ago now and decided to make a world. We started talking about this world, who would live in it, what it would be like, and how we could make it unique. With a random idea and a roll on a chart (and a lot of refining), we thought up the world that would be the backdrop for the story known as The Rules of Creation.

The world operates on the premise that a powerful being called the Creator roams the universe, creating worlds and populating them with diverse life and intricate designs. He creates these worlds with an incredibly powerful substance: his own blood. Using this "Kingsblood", which, whimsically, has been referred to as "creative juices", the Creator made the tapestries and art of the universe, making each planet with unique and utterly amazing lifeforms that functioned perfectly in their chosen world and environments. When he was done creating the worlds, the excess Kingsblood would be "dried up" and become the lava which resides in the worlds' cores.

Where the world of The Rules of Creation comes in is here: the Creator had started on another world, forming it with his blood, when something happened. It is not specified what event took place, but whatever occurred, the process of creation was interfered with, leaving a half-formed blob literally seething with excess Kingsblood.

That's where the epicness begins.

It turns out that, left unchecked, Kingsblood takes on a life of it's own, and begins to create independently of it's designer. In the initial years after the planet's birth and subsequent forming and shaping, great sprays of Kingsblood rocked the world, creating plants, animals, and sentient beings in amazing complexity.

After thousands of years of turmoil and chaos, something happened--something still unknown--which changed the world and considerably diminished the amount of Kingsblood activity over the face of the earth. Kingsblood was still a very essential part of the world, however, and lay across the world in lakes, bubbling ponds, and--still active in some cases--geysers and volcanoes.

The world began to realize that Kingsblood could be harvested--and controlled--and since then, the nations haven't been the same. A great nation of humans, luckily located near one of the greatest areas for the harvesting of Kingsblood has shaped their kingdom to revolve around this powerful substance: harvesting and selling it in mass quantities, capturing and selling new creations as geysers make them, and studying and researching the liquid, eventually creating a whole science out of it.

About this time, one of the greatest scientists ever to walk the face of the earth wrote a book that would help all of the sentient races of the world understand Kingsblood: this book was named The Rules of Creation. This tome compiled a list of circumstances, conditions, and rules that defined how things were created using Kingsblood. Even though the chaotic forces of Kingsblood lacked the Creator to guide their design, the functionality of the creations were obvious and complex, and always seemed to fit their environment. In other words, a creation was always fully functional, able to survive their immediate extremities, and had features that specifically benefited them.

What was created was directly related to the amount of Kingsblood that was released, and the velocity in which it hit a surface (for to create something, Kingsblood had to have sufficient time to activate under the effects of oxygen, and had to hit something with enough force). How much Kingsblood there was determined either how many creations were made and/or how big they were. The velocity determined the complexity of the creation.

What it hit also had effects: if Kingsblood hits a desert for instance, the creation is specifically designed for that environment. If it happens in water, the creation is designed for aquatic behavior, whether it be fresh or salt. And all this it does instantaneously. Numerous and amazing creations abound in the world, and all are specifically suited for their terrains and have been designed for functionality.

It is in this world that our story begins...

• The balancing force that has kept the Kingsblood checked for centuries now is suddenly disrupted, and the earth begins to careen towards how it was in the years of chaos following it's birth. Since the people that inhabit the world didn't know what kept it balanced in the first place, they have no way to restore it, and as such are helpless to stop the oncoming torrent of destruction... er, creation.
• A mysterious singular sentient has appeared in a recent geyser blast of Kingsblood, shocking amvasologists (scientists studying the substance) in the region. This person appeared in a torrent that created a number of other creatures all similar, except for him, the black sheep of the bunch. Now this goes against everything the world knows of Kingsblood, since anything that is created in a particular blast is always related somehow, and there is rarely ever a singular person made, since the Rules of Creation state that the thing that is created has to be able to reproduce in some way.
• A particularly bright scientist and scholar of many subjects (AKA our hero), gets his hands on said mysterious stranger, and begins to study the strangely mute individual, trying to learn more about this odd occurrence. He is confronted with other rival scholars and unscrupulous businessmen, all trying to get their hands on the individual, for their own selfish reasons.
• This individual (as the reader learns from scenes with him as the viewpoint character), is amnesiac--he has no idea who he is, what he can do, and how to go about in this world. Which is another oddity--created beings are always aware of what they can do and how to survive (and how to communicate, at least in their own tongue), per the Rules of Creation. This individual seems to learn extraordinarily quickly however, learning the local language just by observing the young scholar who is studying him, a fact which even he does not understand.
• As the mystery deepens, the scholar and the strange being are dragged into the situation involving the disintegration of the balancing force that checked the King's Blood, and learn why it is happening, and how to stop it. 

There is more--much more--but I cannot reveal it, lest it ruin the book for you. But those are the main points. I hope you enjoyed reading the idea, and I hope you like it well enough to read it when we finish writing it (which will take a while, because of the epic scope of the story and the world).

The Nine Disciplines

I've been agonizing about not having a very good magic system for my novels, but a few month ago, that finally changed. Below is a set of guidelines and lists for my magic system, known as the Nine Disciplines. This is the magic system I am using for my series, The Proanadi, as well as the world in which the scene Prisoner is set in. If you read closely, you can figure out how Alaeph can do what he does.

The way it works is thus: any known magic-user has access to one, several, or all of these Disciplines. All "magic" as people know it derives itself ultimately from the Nine Disciplines. Where magic-users differ is WHERE they get their power from--their power source. There can also be differences in areas of focus, and ways that they use the different disciplines (because, the possibilities within the Disciplines are almost unlimited).

Here are the Nine Disciplines below, grouped as they would be commonly, with three groups of three:

The Nine Disciplines

Material

1 Physical (change in physical matter)

2 Sensory (change in perception)

3 Elemental (manipulation of the elements)

Ultramaterial

1 Influential (change in feeling)

2 Intellectual (change in thought)

3 Essential (manipulation of life energies)

Supernal

1 Continuous (disruptions in space or time)

2 Creative (creation of new energy or matter)

3 Potential (manipulation of force)

Examples of something being done with each Discipline below:

Physical: Enhances your (or another's) strength

Sensory: Tricking another individual's perceptions, making you effectively invisible

Elemental: Shooting fire from your hands

Influential: Providing a morale boost to your comrades

Intellectual: Tampering with someone's memory

Essential: Bringing someone back to life

Continuous: Teleportation (space) or slowing time (time)

Creative: Creating food and water out of nothing

Potential: Throwing up a wall of pure force

Now, there are many different limitations and tricks associated with each Discipline, and points where they overlap, but different Disciplines work better in different situations. Where the line is drawn between the different types of magic-users in the world comes from one major thing (though there are other, less important differences): Power Source. Where do they derive their power from?

Below is a list of some magic-users and their power sources:

Wizards – Power through learning (words and rituals that channel the energy)

Clerics – Power through prayer*

Sorcerers – Power through lineage (having some form of magical creature’s blood in your DNA)

Favored Soul – Power through divine connection*

Dragosamns – Power through dragon totems (similar to Stewardic power)**

Roshi – Power through Chaos**

Druids – Power through natural connection and energy

Talir-Knights – Power through one’s own energy

Demons – Power through destruction (breaking down of matter or energy)

* Both Clerics and Favored Souls gain their ultimate power from the Stewards. Only the means are different.

** Although both Roshi and Dragosamns gain their abilities through their dragon blood, their actual power sources come from outside their bloodline, unlike sorcerers.

Different ways of organizing the same categories of energy are found below:

Clerical Blessings

Earthly Blessings

1 Physical (Blessing of the Flesh)

2 Sensory (Blessing of the Eyes)

3 Influential (Blessing of the Heart)

4 Intellectual (Blessing of the Mind)

Holy Blessings

1 Elemental (Blessing of the Burning Blood)

2 Essential (Blessing of the Living Blood)

3 Potential (Blessing of the Compelling Blood)

Heavenly Blessings

1 Continuous (Blessing of the Soaring Soul/Eternal Soul)

2 Creative (Blessing of the Inceptive Soul)

Dragosamn Totems

Physical (Totem of Substance)

Sensory (Totem of Image)

Elemental (Totem of [Insert Element Name Here])

Influential (Totem of Presence/Inspiration)

Intellectual (Totem of Reason)

Essential (Totem of Blood)

Continuous (Totem of Foresight/Passage/Intervention)

Creative (Totem of Origin)

Potential (Totem of Impact)

That is the extent of it, but there is much more in the way of details to be ironed out with this system. Thanks for reading, and I hope you liked it!