Of Fractured Edges Afterword (+ Recording!)

The last of the first four afterwords/forewords—the one for Of Fractured Edges. This…this one might be the most intense of them, emotionally. Longest as well for sure. Most spoilerific too, so beware.

Divine Shattering

Anytime I try to explain how Of Fractured Edges means to me to anyone, mostly my internal wanderings, I come to this little anecdote. I don’t remember where I heard it or read it first, but to summarize:

When the Game of Thrones TV series was being made, the show runners were just hoping to reach the Red Wedding. They knew they had ‘done’ it when they had given that event of the novels justice in the cinematic form.

Of Fractured Edges is that for me. I know I said Harmonic Waves was like that, but Of Fractured Edges might be the greatest of those moments I needed to show. The one that had always been in some way.

Because this is to be read after the book is done, I will say it freely.

King’s Kharat name, the one he would never have uttered, the one that is spoken of in mystery but never in directness, is Malnoren. His Kharat name …

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Jul 1st

Threads that Bind the Tempest Afterword/Explanation (+ Recording!)

The Adventures of the Trinity and the One Book 3

Here we are again. This time with the afterword-thing for Threads that Bind the Tempest. This is probably the most disjointed one of the lot, but it makes sense given what Threads that Bind the Tempest is. I could have put this before or after the book, but I put it after. I don’t know. It made sense there.

Of course, I recorded myself reading it.

A Paradoxical Tapestry

‘Threads’ was always a part of the title. Threads that Bind was a running title I had for awhile but I needed to work something related to air or wind into the title. That was to keep with the clear elemental motif I had going on. Fire, water, then, this one, air. Earth would follow, but for then it was all wind and air.

So I threw in ‘the Tempest’. I had a title that rolled in a way with all those ‘t’s, was similar to my envisioning of the title and incorporated air.

I had a title that didn’t make much sense. Threads that bind the tempest. What does that mean, concretely? That didn’t really matter. Beyond all notion of sense, it worked. It worked as a …

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Jun 25th

Binding My Own Book (Harmonic Waves)

When I made my own copy of How to Stop Wildfire about two months ago, I knew I was going to make copies for the rest of the series. Starting with the next book, of course—Harmonic Waves.

The cover used for the print/e-copy originally was a painted piece of paper that was supposed to look water-y. I was thinking of doing paints again for the cover for the self-bound book, but I wasn’t feeling it.

Then the idea came to me: use stones. Like glass-y stone pebbles. I liked the idea so I went off to the store to find something reasonable. I didn’t pick up shiny, heavy stones but instead went with aquarium gravel. I picked up this huge bag of it thinking I’d do the entire cover in it. Then I realized that would probably be a bad idea. I had tacky glue, but I was really skeptical of how it would hold. So I picked up some fabric and decided I’d mix the two.

At this point, I had the book already printed and bound. I had the holes be made a bit larger which made the stitching process so much easier. I …

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Jun 12th

Harmonic Waves Retrospection (+ Recording!)

Here I am again with the recordings! This is the second of my additions to the novels. How to Stop Wildfire it felt natural to have a preface to explain the journey to it and explain it. With Harmonic Waves, my thoughts lingered on the content and what it meant rather than the journey so I chose to do a retrospection that is at the end of the novel. There are some spoilers within which is all the more reason it needs to be read following the book itself.

Read…or listened to. Yep. I recorded myself again. Enjoy!

Jumping On and On

If How to Stop Wildfire was practice that I could take a shred of story and transform it into something great through modernization and revitalization, Harmonic Waves was the first serious capitalization of that experience. It was the second, the successor of the messy first that was sourced from an even messier beginning.

How to Stop Wildfire is surely a testament to what I had learned, but it is still chained by it always being a long-time work in progress. Harmonic Waves, on the other hand, was written after I had achieved some semblance of competence …

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Jun 11th

How to Stop Wildfire Preface (+ Recording!)

The Adventures of the Trinity and the One Book 1

This is me reading aloud the new preface before How to Stop Wildfire. Once I get all the books converted Lulu, it will be in the print copy in addition to the new electronic copy version you can get from me.

You can also read it below if you hate listening to recordings like I do:

A Story Before A Story

Once upon a time, there were a few scraps of paper within a notebook that contained a story titled ‘The Creation.’ It had childish humor, a bizarre plot, and characters and ideas very dear to me. It stayed there for many years, gathering dust and the pencil marks slowing fading alway. The memory of it stayed with me, though.

The memory of it and the entire world I had constructed throughout my years. Races. Characters. History.

Stories. So many stories with ‘The Creation’ as just one of them.

One day, I had the mad idea to write out all those stories. Ideas and thoughts that only existed in the confines of my mind–to bring them into reality. To give them form like I had given ‘The Creation’ long ago.

It seemed right, it seemed so utterly correct, …

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Jun 6th

2016 in Art

A break down of the art I did in 2016. A best approximation of it, anyway. Went off of when I scanned it in because I had no other way to figure out when I actually drew it.