Because I started this blog with my writing “journey” in mind, I suppose I ought to say something about it. The series of novels that I am working on is called the Cycle of Tehara (hence the name of this blog.) Within the Cycle of Tehara are several…ish story arcs. Sub-series, if you will. The story arc that I am currently working on is called the Wyldling series. Not particularly clever, but since I haven’t actually published yet I still have time to think of a better name than “series.”

Originally, my magnum opus was a single novel whimsically and incongruously entitled The Grand Illusion (yes, in honor of the song of the same name by Styx) that I began crafting at the tender age of 13. It turns out the joke was on me; I should have called it the Grand Delusion of a Teenage Girl Writing the World’s Longest Novel. Needless to say, the title I had given it had very little to do with the content of the novel, and nothing in common with the Styx song besides the title. The story itself has gone through multiple versions, revisions and expansions since I had the weird dream that spawned it in middle school.

A few months ago, I realized that The Grand Illusion was shaping up to be a grand behemoth of a tome twice as long as Stephen King’s It and The Stand combined. Nobody is going to read a single book so huge it could be used as a doorstop. I was afraid my epic novel – growing longer and longer every year – would be mistaken for the Encyclopedia Bore-tannica or something of that sort. I am no Leo Tolstoy after all. I am not even a Stephen King (wow, can that man churn out books!) So in the past year, I thought that maybe a trilogy would be a better idea. The 3 books into which I chopped up The Grand Illusion were to be called Wyldling Snare, Wyldling Trials, and Wyldling Deliverance. It turns out those three books were probably still too long for the audience I had in mind for them; the story is told from the point of view of 15/16 year olds, so it naturally follows that teenagers and young adults should be my target audience – right?

Currently, the Wyldling Series as I envision it is most likely going to be 5 or 6 books. The major plot points are mapped out for the entire story arc, but I feel that the novel previously known as The Grand Illusion needs a lot of reworking. As I’ve gained life experience and grown as a person, so has my novel. A woman in her fourth decade views things much differently than a 15 year old girl – or at least she should.

Viewed through the lens of the adult that I had become, my characters were behaving in ways that was ridiculous and unrealistic. Even in a fantasy story, certain things have to make sense – like, why is this teenager allowed to venture into forbidden, dangerous territory? Well, I decided that said teenager wasn’t allowed to do this at all, but that in his own mind he had compelling reasons for doing so, even if he was wrong to disobey and suffered the consequences. Besides all that, the protagonist was acting more like a whiny, angsty teenage girl than the battle-trained youth that he was destined to be.

I definitely felt that I needed to develop the villains into more believable characters, too. There had to be feasible motivations for their actions, other than “I’m crazy evil and I want to take over the world, mwahahaha!” or “Hello, I’m a bloodthirsty monster who wants revenge for some random insult the protagonist said to me off-screen.” Villains have to have some redeemable qualities, or at least be relatable as human beings – even if some of them actually are psychopaths and megalomaniacs. Perhaps some of them are merely going along to get along while others have been duped or trapped into following a certain path.

The Wyldling Series features six to eight individual villains/antagonists – depending on how one defines the term – but only five of them appear for significant amounts of time. Two or maybe three of them are killed off by the end of the series – I’m still trying to decide. One of the main villains is eventually “redeemed” and joins the ranks of the “good guys” by the end of the series. Another villain is not identified as such and remains a mystery until a future story arc.

If that sounds confusing, don’t worry. The whole journey is a little confusing to me, too.

I’m still working on the details, and as you know, the devil dwells therein.

God bless, and have a marvelous Holy Week.