Making Final Edits to the Book

So I finally went through and made all of the edits I was given by the editor. Reading through the book again, I didn't see a lot of spelling of grammar mistakes, but a number of sentences and paragraphs had a tendency to be lengthy. So I'm making a final run through to rephrase any sentences that disrupt the flow of the text. The good news is that most edits are minor and there aren't many areas that seriously require edits. Most edits have been small and they are few and far between.

Once I'm done with my final edits, hopefully by the end of July, then the Knight's Journey will be done and ready to be printed and published. At that time we will have Kickstarter campaign to print books and try to get it published.

Gaming

For those who don't know, I am an avid gamer (board and video). I've had the chance to play quite a bit lately, mostly board games as I haven't had the time or the inclination to play any of the video games on my list. Recently I have played Shadows over Camelot, Battlestar Galactica, and Betrayal at House on the Hill. All are great games and I enjoy the level of depth to them. They are complex and they have great themes.

Playing so much has made me want to play some board games that are themed for books. I have played the Game of Thrones board game and even the Bioshock Infinite games. They are great games, but I would much rather have a game created that is not a war game. It would be really cool to see a co-op game for something like the Mistborn books or the Wheel of Time.

Maybe once I am done working on my book series I will be able to focus on creating a game for my own books. It would be really fun to work on and it would let me show so much more of the world.

World Building

I've been working really hard on outlining the second book in my Knights Journey series, something that I am quite proud of. As a result of all of my outlining, I have been doing a lot of world building so I figured that this would be a fun topic to post about.

My world is called Eos, and the two main countries of my tale are Atlea and Lauratrea (you can visit theknightsjourney.angelfire.com to see a map). Much of my second book is going to take place in Lauratrea and this has led me to elaborate on my world. There are a lot of aspects of the land that I have already built and defined, but  there is still much that needs to be created. For instance, in the capitol of Lauratrea I developed an arena where the public gathers to watch as fighters are pitted against each other. I always planned to have an arena, but now I am developing the rules and traditions that go with it. It is really fun, but it can be difficult to work out a history of traditions that establish rules that make sense and perfectly fit my needs. Its hard to build a world that is the way you envision it while maintainimg consistency and plausibility. There has to be a reason things are the way they are. There has to be a history.

I really enjoy building my world, but I feel bad that most of what I create will not be placed into the books. On my website, I made a page about the various countries of my world. It lists some history and some of the major cities and places. One of my ideas (for when I have time) is to turn the list of cities into a set of hyperlinks so that I can create a page for each city so that readers who are interested can read about all of the histories and the unseen aspects of my world. Maybe I'll one day create a history book for my world.

Alex Writes His Thoughts

Hello readers,

A lot of things have been happening with the Knight's Journey series. I found an editor (with help from my girlfriend Carissa) and she is now in the process of working on my story. I don't think that I could have edited my own story. I tried to read through it but it's really hard to read something that I wrote (though not because the story or the writing is bad). I find it very hard to focus on my own story because I know how it goes. Because of this, I continually overlook small details and continuity errors. After rewriting the whole first part of the book (as well as a large chunk of the middle) I found it difficult to notice the small errors that occurred where the revisions and the original text overlap.

Anyways, I have been working on the outline for book 2. Writing a book series certainly is a large project (though I enjoy the work). It has been very difficult lately to focus and work on book one. After all, I had already finished the book and then gone back to drastically edit and rewrite large sections of it. Once the story was complete, I thought that the work was over. I did not realize how much more would be required after the completion of the novel in order to make it ready for publication and in order to spread the word about the book. It will probably sound naive, but I had hoped that I could publish the finished book and that readers would gradually recognize its potential. So I worked on creating a website and a Facebook page and a Twitter and this blog, and the maintaining them all has been difficult. But there are some fun aspects as well. The website and the blog will allow me to post fun information about my world that I wouldn't otherwise get to share with readers through the books. I look forward to that because there was a lot of worldbuilding that went into the creation of Eos. There is much more to the land than just what you see in the books, and it will be interesting to see how readers like such information. I look forward to compiling it all and making it accessible (don't worry, there won't be any spoilers).

Now that I have a website and stuff and my novel is out being edited, I finally have time to sit down and outline book 2 and book 3. I am very grateful to be able to return to working on the actual creation of my stories. While it has been fun and rewarding to prepare book one for publication, my true passion is the actual writing. It is fun to plan and see where the story goes. I know how the story is going to progress, but there are a lot of small decisions that seem to change the story, like where the characters go and how fast the story should progress. But the work is fun and it is going well. I cannot wait until the outline for book two is ready and I can begin work on a draft of the story.

I want to get back to working on my story, so I think this will be the end of my post. But I will make sure to write again soon.

Updates for The Knight's Journey

I recently finished working on the Apprentice, the first novel in a planned fantasy trilogy called the Knight's Journey. I have created a twitter account, a website, and a Facebook page for the book series as I work towards self-publishing the novel.

As of right now, I am happy to announce that the cover art for the novel is currently in process and the manuscript has been sent to an editor to be professionally edited. The editor should have my manuscript back by the end of May at the latest, meaning that sometime in July or August I can expect to have a finished product.

I am excited to see this work finished and I will continue to provide updates on the book series as time goes by.