~lady-of-the-whip

I totally apologize if this post is incoherent, but like I said, exciting! ♥

The Imperial Guard is going to be a trilogy!

... okay, for that to make much sense, I'll have to explain what my plan for IG was before this whole trilogy thing came about:

The original plan was for there to be two books: before/during the revolution, and after the revolution. But there had been a few problems! First of all, no matter how much trimming I did, the first book was going to be way longer than the second. And then there were some things that I wanted to do later in the first book that I was going to cut out because it would just make the thing too long and unwieldy.

But then someone's comment on this chapter got me thinking. What if I tweak a big upcoming conflict a bit and make it more of a climax, and split the first book into two? And now that I've thought about it, that kind of solves a lot of the reservations I had!

So here's how it's going to be: I'm going to do two more arcs for book one (with a flashback chapter sandwiched between those that will explain a few things), which will probably come to somewhere between five and ten more chapters. And since there was a lull between the latter arc there and the arc that will start book two anyway, it kind of works out perfectly.

So yeah! It's a trilogy! Eeeeee!

And I'm done. XD I just had to squeal about neatly everything worked out.

Since I didn't want to overload the author comments on the chapter I just posted, I decided to shove some character notes into a journal entry for those of you who are interested. It's just rambling, but enjoy?

Character Notes:

Victor told Cat that he admired his ability to adapt, but he didn’t seem to notice that his stagnancy was a problem until now. He fancies himself such a father figure to everyone, but because he’s still stuck in the same mindset, he ended up manipulating one of his charges. Finally realizing how flawed his approach was what kept him hiding for most of the chapter, but now, he’s at least reevaluating it.

Kite spent most of the chapter in hiding, as well, but that’s mostly the alpha male hurt pride talking. He has a lot of ego invested in fixing everything with those ginormous hands of his, and the fact that Cat was in a position where he couldn’t help completely cowed him. Talia was the best one to shove him forward; they were raised as siblings, so she’s used to it.

I wish I could have had more of Talia, but comforting isn’t her thing, which is why it’ll take Cat so long to get to know her. She’s invested in helping Cat, but she’ll go about it the logical way: finding out what happened to him. Damian is very similar, but he had to remind Cat that he’s in charge, first. He definitely could have waited to say it until Cat was less drugged and confused, but Damian doesn’t really have a lot of empathy. He doesn’t realize what he’s doing to Amara by putting her at a distance, either.

As for Amara, she’s grown a little from the oversimplifications she made in chapter five, but not much. Though her armchair psychology wasn’t too off, she still spent most of the chapter hovering in the background, like she’s done the entire time. Her attempt to be a leader at the end was very clumsy, but it was her first try. She’ll get better.

I got to show Saphie doing her job finally, and doing it well. She gains a little confidence from having her family there: during the opening scene, she lets Chris talk to Cat and keep him calm, but when her father and fiancé are present, she actually engages Cat.

And Chris got to shine! Which just makes me happy. He hasn’t had much do to but freak out thus far - it’s the burden of having your first friend ever be totally high-maintenance. He was one of the most clearheaded and efficient people in the situation, which helped him be a bit more assertive. He also showed how well he knew Cat by not absolving him from blame. He helped Cat, but didn’t coddle him.

Finally, Cat himself. He so desperately wants to be independent, and is only beginning to realize that he’s a long way from that. He’s actually making an effort to talk to people like a human being, though! I’m so proud. Cat’s still very young in a lot of ways, but at least he’s resigning himself to depending on people a little. Which is good. Because when the consequences of his capture come to punch him in the face next chapter, he’ll need something to fall back on!

Well played, dA. XD

This is something of a heads-up regarding my two in-process stories, and something new in the works!

I'm probably not going to have a lot of time to work on The Imperial Guard this month. I'm going to want to, of course, but I will have to stop myself. The deadline for my senior creative writing thesis application is April 15th, and I need 35-50 pages of fiction to that end. I've decided to write the first two or so chapters of a new story idea that I am seriously considering, should I make it into the program. More on said story idea in a minute.

I'm going to try to get a lot of writing done this week; it may well turn out that I finish those pages in no time. (Hey, I already have five!) So maybe IG will be back sooner than I think. I certainly hope so. There is violence and bloodshed, after all.

As for the new story! It's some unholy hybrid between suspense and slice-of-life. The narrative style is very different from things I've done before: it's first person, first of all, and I'm giving the "several unrelated storylines become connected" sort of plot a go. It's also set in Tokyo, because if all goes well and I get into Sophia, I will be doing most of the story's planning in Tokyo, which should give my creative process a nice kick. Maybe I'll post a few pages here when I finish!

And as for a story you haven't heard from in a while: Catalyst is getting a facelift! Or, rather, a revision. As I always say at the beginning of each chapter, the story was formerly a cowriting project, and I was working half from the old logs, and half from my own revisions. I stopped working on the story some time ago in order to work on the upcoming plot developments, which hadn't been firmly plotted out within the old logs. In the process of reworking, I also went back and reread the earlier chapters, and realized that there was quite a bit I wanted to fix.

So, while I'm early enough in the process, I'm going to revise the first fourteen chapters of Catalyst in order to have it fit with the rest of the story. I'll leave the old chapters up here, but I'll post v.2 of every chapter when I finish it. That'll probably help refresh everyone's memory, yes?

Some chapters won't need too much, but the earlier chapters, at least, I want to more or less rewrite. (That Aurel-Tuyen meeting has already been rewritten five times. Oh dear. Tuyen's neck must be getting sore by now.)

And that's about it on my end!

GO AWAAAAAY D: and stop noting me.

No love,
Becky