It’s not been lost on me that it’s been almost an entire year since I did anything on this site, whether that’s posting an update (like this one) or updating R.E.N/D. The truth is, I lost my motivation for many months… And when it came back again, there was another novel I had to write.

So, introducing… My now fourth (or fifth, maybe) book!

Unnamed Fantasy Title With Dragons and Stuff!

This might sound ironic coming from a guy who’s had a webnovel on hiatus for 12 months, but I have this strange compulsion to finish things. If I start a novel, I really struggle to do anything else until I finish that novel – or, at least, the first draft. And that’s essentially what happened here. I began writing this novel about wars and dragons, and it spiralled into this almost eight month long first draft process that I only finished today.

It’s by far the most difficult novel I’ve ever written. Not because it’s any better (and hopefully no worse) than any of my others, but because I’ve never started a project I’ve had such a love/hate relationship with. I routinely (and I mean, like twice a week routinely) switched between absolutely loving and absolutely hating this project, and yet no matter how bad I felt it was going, that strange compulsion I talked about earlier forced me to finish it. The final word count of the first draft came in at just under 155,000 words, but I must have completely rewritten the first 30,000 of those no less than 4 times.

It was horrible. I’d keep writing these openings I felt, at some times, were going pretty well… And then I’d look back and realise that there was just something not right about it. It didn’t meet up to my own expectations, so I scrapped and started over. And I did this again, and again, until I finally had a start I felt was strong enough to build upon… And so build upon it I did. And then, later on, some of those doubts started creeping back again, but by that point I’d already gotten so far that I just couldn’t bring myself to start again… So I kept going, trying to fill in the cracks as I saw them, until I finally got to the end.

And now, honestly? I don’t know how I feel about it. Unlike my other novels, which I adore and am genuinely proud of, I feel like this one could be so much better. I’m definitely going to have to do a lot of editing with this, maybe at a fundamental level, before it can ever truly be finished, but I’ve already spent so long on just the first draft that, quite frankly, I need a break from it.

Don’t get me wrong, I really like the concept – and I think I’ve done some cool and interesting stuff with the world-building – but there’s just something about it that’s not quite right that I can’t quite place my finger on.

So yeah, there’s been an interesting and difficult ride that, for now at least, is finally over. And that’s why I’ve not been here for way too long, because I just couldn’t bring myself to do anything else until I got that first draft finished.

Okay, but what is it actually about?

Oh right, yeah. I guess I should actually explain it.

Essentially, the premise of the story is that there’s a crusade that’s been conquering continents in this world that is, literally, endless. Long ago, the main ‘group’ of the story – the Shenraean – lost the crystal that allowed their homeland to thrive. The crystal was shattered and scattered far across the eastern seas, and so the Shenraean started a crusade to reclaim the shards of that crystal, hoping to return their home to its former glory.

This crusade, known as the Kaiassan Crusade, is focused around the island of Kaiassa. Kaiassa is a floating island, held in the air by incredibly powerful magic, and pulled like a chariot by two elder dragons. These elder dragons – some of the largest (and I mean LARGE), oldest, and most powerful of their kind – have served the crusade loyally for more than 200 years, and it is their power that all but makes the crusade unstoppable. And so, the Kaiassan Crusade – led by the High Sharran – has been going from continent to continent, conquering native kingdoms and retrieving their lost shards.

Then they come to the continent of Avresse, and things start to go wrong. The main character of the story is Sairan, the kinen to the High Sharran. In Shenraean society, a kinen is a warrior-slave who owes a generation-spanning blood-debt to a family that they, or their ancestors, have wronged. In Sairan’s case, one of his ancestors once tried to betray the ancestor of the High Sharran, and for this he – and all of his direct line – are forced to serve as a fighting slaves until that debt is finally repaid. Kinen are hated in society; they are seen as nothing more than criminals, tainted by the blood of those who committed the original crime, and are treated as expendable and lower than dirt. But Sairan is not just kinen to the High Sharran, he is also the High Sharran’s cousin, and lives his life straddling the line between servitude and shame.

But when one of the two elder dragons that pulls Kaiassa is killed, Sairan is sent out to find a replacement. No-one really expects him to succeed, and many even expect him to die, but Sairan feels he has no choice. He finally sees the opportunity to do something that could clear his line of their debt, and so he sets out through war and intrigue to try and save the very crusade that hates him. There are rumours of a third elder dragon on Avresse, after all – all he has to do is find it.

On his quest, Sairan is aided primarily by four other characters. The first is Brother Zadain, an ageing Kaiassan priest who used to be a spy, and finds himself caught up in the intrigue of its politics. The second is Ressine, a dragon-worshipping sorceress who lost the ability to speak, and who guides Sairan through hostile territory. The third is Glaze, the draken beast who becomes Sairan’s loyal mount and companion. And fourth is Zestria, the greatest gladiatrix on Avresse – and a woman who’s destined to die.

Needless to say, a lot happens. There’s battles, magic, lots of intrigue, an entire murder mystery/betrayal subplot, a grand old journey filled with wonder and peril, and some very big dragons.

And hopefully, it will one day live up to this hype I’ve built for it.

About ‘Art’.

So some of you might have noticed there’s an art page missing from the navigation bar. That’s because it was terrible and I removed it.

When I first made my site, I wanted to have some colour to it. I wanted some cool little images to just give people something to look at, and to associate with the various projects I’ve been working on. To that end, I deployed Midjourney, an A.I art tool.

Let me just say this straight: there’s a lot of hate for A.I art right now. And for good reason. When I first made my site and generated those images, this was right at the beginning of the release of these generation tools. Other people quickly caught on to the ethical considerations of using them, but I didn’t – I just saw something harmless that could add colour to my website. I didn’t want to make money off them, I didn’t want to go around claiming they were my pieces, I just wanted something small and cool to increase how visually pleasing my site was to look at. And why not, right? There didn’t seem to be any legal or copyright considerations, you just typed in a prompt and bam! Something nice you could stick on your page.

Now, however, I’m at this awkward point where I don’t have anything to replace them with. I can’t use other people’s direct work, and for now I can’t afford to commission any artists. So I’ve come to a compromise that I hope doesn’t rattle too many people’s feathers: I’m not going to use any more A.I art, but I’m also going to keep the stuff that’s already here until I can find suitable alternatives.

Oh, and, I also got rid of the art page. That was just a glorified gallery where I stuck all the stuff I generated for my site in a single page. Originally, I did this because I wanted to give people a place where, if they wanted to actually see full-sized versions of those images, they could. In hindsight, however, it never seemed particularly appropriate. It just came off as kinda shitty and glorifying, and I realize now that my disclaimer about using midjourney just sounded like me taking credit. It wasn’t my intention to do that, I just wasn’t thinking. Now technically that page still exists, as in you theoretically you can go to it using a URL address, but I did remove all direct links. In time I might delete it for good, but I tend to be nervous about doing things that can’t be reversed.

About R.E.N/D.

Oh, and finally R.E.N/D! I’m going to stop making promises about it. It’s not fair to post a few chapters, then never update for ages while leading people to believe new chapters are right around the corner. One day I plan to actually sit down and train the aim of my strange compulsion to finish things on it, but right now I need to do other things.

And finally finally – the audiobook version. I thought it would be a really cool idea to use A.I software to upload an AI narrated version of R.E.N/D to my YouTube channel. I kinda just got blown away by the technology, to be honest, and how real it sounded, and it just seemed like such a perfect thing to do because I always wanted to have my stuff narrated but absolutely hate my own voice.

Now I don’t know if I should continue or, scrap it, or even delete what’s already there. What do you guys think? I went into it thinking it would be a cool, alternative way to experience my work, but again I was naive. I had no real idea about the ethical implications of using those tools until after I had already put out quite a few chapters. Don’t get me wrong – I do kind of like it, I think it sounds cool, but frankly I have no idea if it’s right to keep using it.

The End (Finally)

Anyway, that’s it for this late-night and far too long update. If anyone reads this and finds it in any way useful or entertaining, you’re a cool person. To anyone else who reads this, you’re also a cool person.

Stay safe, have fun, and be excellent.