... revised disembodiment

The ends now, and this should be no surprise, return to chapter 1, for a small cleanup and tweak to Nightfall's opening section, thanks to input from none other than Jyre herself (her author, anyway). A weakness in the presentation was pointed out, one that effects the entire plot, and so the situation was rectified with the deletion of two paragraphs and the addition of two totally different ones. For those who have read it, the changes are centered at the very end of that section.

Moving along...

... all but the last

The bulk of Chapter 24 is now "on paper" with only one more scene remaining (fans of the original may remember a certain epilogious meeting in Nightfall's tower) before I call it finished. Much of 24 is similar to the original's chapter 25, especially a certain conversation between Nightfall and James that served as a wrap-up for some loose ends. Of course, the contents of the conversation are much different, it's just the scene that's the same. In more ways, though, this chapter mirrors the first one of the rewrite.

(In the original they discussed the nature of evil vs. chaos, who the mysterious robed figures were, and what the summoned entity actually was. In COT-R chaos vs. evil has already been discussed, they know exactly who the figures are, and have no reason to further discuss the summoned entity... so they are freed up for other topics.)

Chapter 24 is going to end up being half the length of a normal chapter, but with the segues preceding it included, it will be just a hair short of the previously shortest chapter.

Another oddity... 24 is the first chapter I've written in a very long time without an outline.

... poised, ready to spring

Whew. Chapter 20 is done. Alliances and Betrayals. Book 5 is done. Book 5 is also the longest book, at over 100,000 words. None of the chapters in it are overly long, but it has some very long segues, most over 2000 words.

What can I say? As I already mentioned, the goal of 20 was to get everything poised on the verge of the climax. For every character that means something a little different. For Nightfall, it means facing the consequences of a choice he made. For Jyre, it means her journey coming full circle. For Ghost and Lytha it means facing the aftermath and side effects of their turmoil. For Sheam, it means pushing ahead in site of a worst case scenario. For James, it means realising that one can become hopelessly out of one's league.

As my critics may note, Chapter 20 is extremely rough. When doing revisions, I usually have the luxury of many months of additional experience in order to boost my writing ability and refine a chapter based on a better understanding of what's coming ahead. Well, Book 5 will get the last part, but there isn't going to be much going on to boost my writing ability in the next 90,000 words of Book 6. For the last book, a revision will be even harder, and I will have to rely more and more on the input of my critics.

I have two confirmed yeses for cover artists, and one strong possibility, with a few others who I plan to ask if one of the three artists I have either can't do two covers or can't do even one. I'd like to have fewer artists rather than more, so that the styles won't be too far all over the place (the three I have all possess very, very different styles). I've also started thinking about proofreaders. It would be perfect to have six, and assign each to two books. How could I find six proofreaders who don't mind not being paid, though?

In case anyone is still keeping track, this point in the rewrite very, very loosely lines up with around Chapter 23 in the original.

... a chapter after all

Chapter 19 congealed into a chapter far better than I had hoped, eventually coming together under the title Hosts and Hospitality, which applies to all four plot threads present. It is mostly driven by Sheam and Ghost who have semi-self contained and extremely important adventures which begin and end within the chapter, and are told bit by bit as we switch back and forth between them, with an occasional visit to James and Nightfall, who are both continuing the paths they began at the start of Book 5. Only Jyre is absent from Chapter 19, with part of Ghost's adventure being told from Lytha's point of view, who is with him the entire time. James meets a character often talked about but so far unseen, and helps me make up for all of those cute Ultima Underworld references I had cut from the story. Nightfall on the other hand gives a brief nod to nostalgia with a small touch which hearkens back to the original, in a story that increasingly resembles the original less and less. Sheam meets a collection of minor characters which I suspect many readers did not think they would see again, especially not all within the same chapter. As for Ghost, we may just learn his most closely guarded secret.

Additionally, I solved a problem I was having with James, being that a lack of a personal conflict for the character weakened his integrity as a principal. I have developed that inner conflict, and have evolved his adventure to take full advantage of it. This separates his path even farther from the other principals, which is what was needed, giving him his own set of goals, needs, fears, and possibilities of failure.

Amusingly, sometimes I like to check on the fraction of the entire story each principal represents. I discovered that Jyre, Lytha, Ghost, and Sheam all sit at around 17/16% of the total (in that order from high to low), with Nightfall having a much larger chunk and James a much smaller chuck - but if you average out Nightfall and James, both come to 16.5% ... I wonder how I managed to balance it out so evenly.

... a new chapter

I just finished Chapter 18. Sometimes when finishing a chapter I am as surprised as the readers about how it turns out, but this one was fairly by the numbers, given that I've had months to tinker with the outline of it without actually writing anything. So, I had the entire thing pretty much mapped out point by point without much deviation. Some, but not much. The only surprise is that I actually finished it! Some parts turned out great, other parts I will need to whack steadily with the revision hammer for months to come, but hey, it's a first draft, and even the good parts will be revised.

The title of the chapter is Guests in Alien Realms, which is taken directly from the original, but it's as far from the original as anything I've written so far. It puts Jyre, James, Ghost, Lytha, and Nightfall all in unlikely situations that they were not at all prepaired for, even though they were certain that they knew exactly what to expect. (Ghost is in it, but only told from Lytha's point of view.) It includes a scrap I had actually written nearly a year ago, inserted nearly verbatum into a scene I had long imagined but finally was able to completely illustrate.

Finally, I've included the name change I had been planning for Nightfall for a long, long time now. He's still called Nightfall, but his real name is now completely fictitious, rather than being a distortion of my own name. I am not going to say it here, yet. I'd rather my critics judge it in context. (On the other hand, it doesn't matter what they think, since I am not going to be changing my mind about this topic!)

... on hold? stalled? dead?

Time to fill in this blank.

I moved. I created an online cv/portfolio for my game design job hunt. I learned UnrealEd and 3dsMax. I resumed work in dromed. I have not been working on COT.

I am a little discouraged about it, thinking again that I don't really know what would make all of the work I've done worth it. I don't even really know what worth it would mean. I continue to grapple with the "fanfictions ought not to be written" concept versus the "this isn't really a fanfiction, it's something else" fantasy and the "I am really only doing this for practice and experience" excuse. On top of it all is the higher truth that I don't need to pretend this is something it isn't, I don't need to justify it to anyone, and I wouldn't have already spent so much time on if if it wasn't worth it to myself merely writing it. Noone will read it who doesn't actually want to and the only ones who will ridicule it will be the ones who don't actually want to read it.

It all comes back to Daneel Todulem. I am going to change the name. The question is... am I changing it because I think I should, or because I want to? The truth is that I like the new name I came up with more than that name - but is it honest to do so? Why pretend that this is something it isn't? Why disguise it? Will it make the story more accessible to people if they do not believe that one of the six main characters is "played by" the author? Maybe it will.

I also can't forget this truism: you can only be at your best when you're taking yourself the least seriously.

... his name is Nightfall

There was no sense in putting it off - now all of the section headings for Nightfall are properly labeled as Nightfall and not Daneel, as per popular vote. Find and replace!

... they would call it episodic

Chapter 9 is the biggest example of inconsistencies of style which resulted from the huge writing gaps that occur ed from around 2005 - 2007, during which Chapters 6 - 9 were written. I was maturing as a writer, and was seriously feeling the stress of being cut off from something creative that I really wanted to work on. When I eventually did write Chapter 9, over the course of months, I redefined alot about Lytha which would then inform the revision I did after 9 was finished. Many of her scenes in Chapters 2 and 4 were written and rewritten after 9 was finished, such as her investigation of Thalia's chest and her infiltration of the astrologer's tower. Her torture scenes were also very nearly rewritten, expanding both on The Inquisitor's methods and how she reacted to it all. Essentially, Chapter 9 is the one that created Lytha.

For the others, it did not go so well. Nightfall's tone was also very different in this chapter, but rather than be an improvement I decided to scale him back to how he had been written all along, and during this revision I attempted to scale him back even more. At first he seemed to swerve in Lytha's direction, with his inner thoughts becoming very poetic, and then he swerved in the opposite direction, with over-written phrases and an overabundance of vocabulary that would have made him very tedious to read. Ghost became mostly wisecracks and humorous asides and little substance. His sections were riddled with commentary that often went off on wild tangents from what was going on, leaving him feeling detached from the action and the importance of where he was and what he was doing. I removed most of it in the revision just now, and in one case completely deleted an entire section of his and rewrote it from scratch - making it very different. It seemed that I knew what I wanted to do before, but it was too difficult to write in the amount of free time and energy I had during school, so rather than actually make any of it happen I made jokes about it and took shotcuts, thinking myself clever and ironic. Well, the new version is neither clever nor ironic, and is instead (I think) exciting and satisfying. It was good that I had done such a cheap shot when I wrote this last year - it allowed me to totally throw it out and do something good without quirks or gimmicks. When Ghost is funny, it's because of how he reacts to horrible situations, not because he's sitting in the theater as part of the cast to MST3K being all deconstructivist... or is that simply obnoxious?

... the urge to add more

Chapter 8 was very easy to expand to a full chapter's length, and I didn't even really need to add any new plot points, just expand and extrapolate what was already there. The biggest changes were to Nightfall's sections, each of which were almost entirely rewritten. One small bit was cut off from where it sat, moved earlier, and expanded. I am surprised that so much in these sections as well as in chapter 7 were left so mediocre, even after the last revision. It's possible that when I was writing and revising it the subject matter simply left me so uninspired that I didn't want to bother trying to fix it. I feel that with the division and repurposing of these sections into a new chapter 8 with the theme of "serious distractions" (that's the new title) the events are given breathing room to be fleshed out and given true purpose.

Sheam saw the greatest amount of expansion, with several completely new scenes written that filled in some gaps that were left up to assumption before, or simply forgotten. The goal of the work was to 'give' the chapter to Sheam and Nightfall, just like 7 was given to Jyre. Though Ghost and Lytha see important events take place here, it is Sheam and Nightfall that provide the structure for the chapter. The strangest thing I did was the incorporation of the end-chapter segue into the body of the chapter. It was unique in that it was a flashback told from Nightfall's perspective, so it naturally lent itself to being part of a chapter proper, but was awkward because it dealt with events from a long time before the start of the story. I worked it in, and it works... I think so, anyway.

... one third done with revision

It's not actually one third done, since one of the chapters in the middle if twice the length of an ordinary chapter, but we can pretend that I am one third done! I think Chapter 5 is exciting for a variety of reasons.

• It's the unofficial gateway to "act 2" where introductions are quite done with and the meat of the story is underway.
• Day to day life is over - all the principals are in some type of peril and have no way to escape it. Of course, much of this peril is the direct result of either their own actions, or the actions of one of the other principals!
• It's told from the point of view of all of them, whereas chapters 1 - 4 are divided with Nightfall and Jyre on the odd side, and Ghost and Lytha on the even one. Sheam is a bit of a nomad, appearing in 2, 3, and 4. (No James yet; as readers of the original will remember, he does not appear in the story until around the middle.)
• It's heavy with COT2 elements. Though not a single word was cut-&-pasted from the discarded documents and into this one, one of the major plot points that impact this chapter and those that follow comes fully formed from my plans for the sequel. The best part is, when it was written into COT2, it seemed tacked on and tenuous, since it was designed to patch a big hole in the original story. As part of the COT rewrite, it's the inevitable progression of events.
• The original COT did not have very many compelling side characters, but Chapter 5 marks the arrival of two of my favorites; Brother Thurm and Richen (the getaway-driver).
• For those who do like fan-ficcy elements, the principals stumble upon two Dark Project locations. I had those missions opened while writing to ensure some level of accuracy, too! (I also did this while writing the bonehoard.)

If I said anything else it would get a little too spoilerific I think. Well today is a holiday in The United States of America (Happy Thanksgiving!) so I won't get another chapter done today, but that doesn't mean that I won't start tinkering on 6.

... where am i AT anyway?

A common question from fans of the original is... at what point in the story is the rewrite? It's hard to answer that because the timeline in the rewrite has changed dramatically. Simply put...

James and Jyre are cira Chapter 17 and have just entered a "lost city".
Nightfall is cira Chapter 22, and has just entered The Lady's realm.
Lytha and Ghost past the conclusion of their story about four chapters ago, and are now deep into sequel territory, none of which was planned for COT2!.
Sheam's story is completely new. Yes, the rewrite features Sheam as one of the principals, and almost all of her story is based on COT2 plans.