A Very Sad Update.

So I think it’s well known that I hate killing off characters, but if I think it is needed in the plot, then I do so. For the final draft, I will get around to killing off a certain main character that I refused to kill off in the previous drafts. It just seemed ridiculous to me that they stayed alive, really. I only kept them alive because of how scared I was to kill them. It changes the plot of the second book slightly, but it’s important that it happens. Otherwise, it’s not realistic and the whole point of the story is not as compelling.

I REALLY hate myself for doing this. The fans will probably hate me just as much, but I can live with that.

To end this off nicely, for the final draft, I will finally do what I proudly proclaimed I would do initially. Now, half of the book is from the protagonist’s perspective and the other half is from the antagonist’s perspective.

Basically, what I’m telling you is that there is now no antagonist or protagonist. There are just warring sides. And really, that’s what I should have done all along.

Gabriel, out.

Great News for Dark Soldier!

Great news! Because the second draft is now likely going to be done before the summer is over, we may see the novel Dark Soldier be published BEFORE it’s original goal of March 2016!

This is heavily reliant upon us getting the proper publisher, as I do not plan to self-publish. I have nothing wrong with self-publishing, but I think this is a better style for me. The plan as of right now is to get either Baen Books, Gollancz Publishing or Penguin Random House. I’m slightly more worried about Penguin house, as I have not heard great things about their interactions with authors. But no matter! We’re closer than we’ve ever been!

Sorry for the great lack of writing-based posts in the last couple of days. I will fix that issue in the coming week.

New Official Art (Coming Soon)

A drawing of the Bandit Queen, Zenti, is being worked on. I only heard of it last night after a delightful evening with A. Sams (the illustrator) and her family. But those who have seen it in progress have had only good things to say about it. I also heard the hair design is a key part of it. But she won’t show it, not yet, not till it’s done! So now it’s just a matter of waiting…

Making a Language: Pt. 2

I haven’t gotten a whole lot more done in regards to language for the novel, but here’s what I can tell you. A lot of soul speak is based off Gaelic, with the general sound at least. The rest, in regards to sound, is based off Elvish. Well, it is and it isn’t. I like Tolkien’s concept I’m making Elvish role off the tongue, in essence making a very human language. But I’m going in a slightly different direction. I don’t want you to have to worry about breathing while speaking this language.

No, don’t worry, you are going to be breathing while speaking. What I mean by that is that I incorporate the breath into the language. For instance, one of the letters is literally just a heavy “H”. It sounds like you’re sighing. So, when you say a word like “Hhalverron”, you get to breath out while speaking. Now, as you may remember with the other blog about this, I don’t actually use English letters for this language. The letter “HHA” is merely a spiral. That’s all. I’m also working on the letters based on breathing in, but I’m not sure how exactly I’m going to do that. That all comes with making the language, I suppose.

So why did I choose to make the language based on breathing? Simply because it’s easier that way. If you can skip the breaths between words, you can get messages across faster. Plus, it sounds cool. Who doesn’t want a really cool sounding language?

I’m beginning to realize just how much is involved making this language. For the next couple weeks, I’ll probably be getting some form of a language major to help me with making this language. I’m still working on connector words, like “And”, “Or”, “Nor”, etc. I’m not sure I mentioned this in the last post, but as of now it’s based on dashes, literally connecting the words or phrases.

That’s it for today’s post, let me know what you think in the comments section. All of the stuff is up for grabs; you guys are more than welcome to try to help me out with this. I’m really not a multiple languages major or anything like that, so I don’t know a whole lot about making languages. But there might be somebody on WordPress that does! So don’t delay to give me ideas!

I NEED To Write

I’m going to do a bit of a rant, if you all don’t mind. I say that the second draft is different. I mention that a lot. But just how different is different? Different enough that, honestly, if I don’t get my first chapter’s edits back, I’m just going to start rewriting within a couple days. So much has to be redone. All of it. I’m sure that I’m more interested in writing this than you all may be by reading it at this point, but it must get out there.

Making a Language: Part 1

So, as the comments section requested language, I’m going to do it until somebody either complains or they ask for another thing. This is one the greatest things I’ve done in a very long time. I don’t want to disgrace his name by putting myself on his level… but I feel kind of like Tolkien. Admittedly, his language is probably going to stay forever cooler than mine, but it’s still fun, and throughout this series I may make drastic changes to the way it’s written.

I was inspired by Chinese pictographs for this particular language. I saw one particular picture that meant something, and then if you drew it multiple times, it meant something else. Well, my language is not going to be quite that complicated. No worries there. The connection works well in my mind.

You’ve already seen one word written in this language. I will show it below, although this is a slightly old diagram. It’s close enough to current that I’ll show it. There are some differences for how I recently approached this. In the original style, as in this style, it’s split up into three sections: a tail, a body and a center. I haven’t fully decided what to do with the centers.

This is how it works for now: The more complicated a concept is, the more complicated it is to draw it. For example, this word does not mean “air”. This word means “wind”. If this were the word for air, it would not have the tail portion, which means “moving”. It would just have the body. The body represents the main idea of the word, rather than the main sound. (Most letters do have a sound that reminds the reader of the idea, however.) Tails are something like adverbs and adjectives in English. Is give support to the body. Therefore, with the tail, it translates to “moving air”. Basically, wind.

For now, because of the added meaning to the tails, the centers do not have the same use. I will likely use them just to differentiate verbs and nouns. For instance, reversing the inner curve may change this word’s meaning from “wind” to “blew”. And this is where the hard decisions comes in.

It seems wrong to me to have the nouns and the verbs look so nearly the same. I’m worried this’ll make the language too boring to look at. Sadly, for language, it seems to be function over form. As an artist, this bothers me, but I have to work with it.

The greatest problem of the hieroglyphics language is simply having to create so many words. In the end, I may have to simply reduce it to representing the sounds. It’s pretty sad, but I’ll live. Oh well.

And as most of this has been implied before, here’s a new thing for you. As I said, the descriptors sometimes sound like what they’re representing. In this case, the letter for moving/rushing has a hard “h” sound. That’s right, the first letter for wind sounds like a sigh. I thought it worked.

That’s it for today, tune in… I don’t know when. I’ll probably make this a weekly thing. So, let me know what you thought of this, and if I should keep doing it. Thanks for reading such a long one today!

Happy Birthday to ME!!

So now you finally get to find out how young this dude actually is. It may not sound like it from all my Soundcloud stuff, but I’m actually 19. Even next to Christopher Paolini, that’s probably way too young to be almost ready to publish a book. But that’s all right, age is just a number.

This year’s going to be psycho for the book, speaking of which. It’s taking off in one of the darkest directions a book can go. It wasn’t really intended, but the very nature of the world makes it have to be dark. It don’t know if it can any longer be considered a teen fantasy, even. I’m not saying I’m necessarily proud of that. I’d intended this to be reaching a wider audience. The characters really took the story and ran with it, though. I can’t stop this thing, it’s like the boulder from Indiana Jones.

Basically either it gets published or I go insane with characters running through my skull demanding an audience. Luckily as an author, I can kill my own creation eventually. So here’s hoping it gets good enough to be published.

Anyway, four minutes till midnight, feels good to be almost two decades old! Sort of. 🙂