Starting tomorrow, to kick-off SPFBO, August 1st, over a hundred of the books (including mine) entered into 2018’s Self-Published Fantasy Blog Off will be available as ebooks for 99c/99p each.
View the entire list here: http://www.andreadomanski.com/spfbo
This is a fantastic opportunity to pick up some great self-published fantasy and see what’s out there! All sub-genres, so if you like fantasy at all, there’s gotta be something that’ll interest you.
With book 1 of my series done and published, I am finally able to turn my full attention to book 2.
I have plenty of notes and ideas and snippets, and work is progressing, but not smoothly, because I never did a couple things during the writing of book 1 that I now wish I had.
Specifically, a master timeline, and a master character list.
I know where all the main characters are, of course, and all the side characters who were with them, but the other side characters, the ones who showed up earlier in the book and then were left behind… those guys all disappeared into the writing ether. I never bothered to establish what happened to any of them, and now it matters, given the events of book 1.
So I spent a day going through my own published book and creating not only a master character list, but also an associated timeline, so that I know where everyone is, what happened to them, and when. It was a pain, but at the same time, kinda pleasant. It hurts good, to quote–I dunno, maybe Family Circus?–something I remember from many years ago.
So that’s done. (Hold on while I make a backup copy, just, y’know, in case)
Turns out I created well over a hundred characters for this book. I suppose that’s pretty normal, or maybe on the low side for epic fantasy. Most of them are just a name accompanied by scant detail. Gender, general age, maybe a relationship with another barely-there character.
It makes me wonder, though, if I should be doing more. Perhaps I could infuse more life into my books by going an extra level deeper even on minor characters. I don’t need to know the backstory of the door guard who the heroes encounter exactly once, but knowing even a tiny bit about him could inject a little character into his one line of dialogue.
I don’t mind making things up on the spot. It is, after all, a core part of the fiction writer job description, but I do need to keep better track of it all.
Russell Cullison 