Happy New Year (almost)

The rewrites for the early chapters continue. Pratt did some major cleanup for one of the ugly sections I wrote and it is actually readable now. It even makes sense. Wow. Writing this book is not the type of project I think I would be able to do alone. It would not have the same feel if left in my hands alone. More characters would live, for example.

Every time I introduce a character that I really like, Pratt demands their blood. He's like some vengeful, evil god that demands human sacrifice.

"He made me laugh. We must kill him!"
"She is interesting. Death to her!"
"I can tell I will like this character. I have written how he will die and it will give you nightmares!"

If anything, the above quotes are understated. And so I continue on, writing and hoping that fictional characters will sate Pratt's bloodlust. I don't want to hear the words: "The coauthor was useful. Off with his head!"

Happy New Year!

Utility Treulos, almost like a utility belt

One of the best things that I think we have done in developing our world is the treulos. Originally meant to be halflings, we wanted to make them something separate and unique from the generic, happy hobbits of much fantasy literature. Although other writers have done this, we wanted to give them a cultural identity of our own flare. I don't recall the details of how, but this turned into having practically no cultural identity of their own.

Being small, the treulos are, as a whole, incredibly social. They always seek to be part of a large community and a bigger whole. Although you will find some treulos who staunchly hold to their old ways when moved to a new home, most will adapt to varying degrees to fit in with their new home. This adaptability is mainly found with treulos who see themselves as more permanently removed from their old home and traditions, and is less likely to be found among those who are traveling a lot, but still maintain a home somewhere. A good example of this is the main character Keane's father, Liam, who despite having frequently traveled as a merchant, still remained faithful to the trollish gods of his homeland.

Besides just being social, treulos are also known for their wanderlust. In truth, only a small percentage of treulos are affected by either a pressing desire to pack up and move to a new location or to always be traveling from spot to spot. Still this percentage is significantly higher than any other race and when coupled with how many treulos there are, means that at this point has been a substantial treulos population in most parts of the world for at least several generations. In addition, this means that many of the merchants found throughout the world are treulos.

So, this gets me back to the title of this post. Since there are just so many treulos everywhere, this means that most areas of the world have encountered the treulos language, which is a combination of their original language and the language of the trolls, who were the first race to which they joined. Being also the language of man of the world's merchants, the treulos tongue started as the international business language and has since developed into the common tongue of the people. Although some cultures still maintain speaking among themselves in their original language, most everyone is fairly fluent in the common language.

Another benefit that the treulos bring to the table is a safeguard against too much racial violence. I'm not saying that racism and hate don't exist in our world, but most governments find it hard to sanction these feelings since doing so could possibly turn the very useful and large portion of their population against them, especially since the treulos not only find it important to integrate themselves amongst a community, but to also have that community integrate as many people as possible into itself to strengthen it as a whole. Even the Neuri Empire, which would love nothing more than to announce the Neuri race as superior to all else, are careful to depict its conflict with the other nations as being based on the superiority of the Neuri Empire instead of the the Neuri race. This allows the treulos living within the empire to see themselves as on the Empire's side in the conflict, as opposed to being against the Neuri. This is important since treulos irregulars have become key in the Neuri's wars and were an integral part of defeating the tunnel-fighting dwarves.

-Prattman

The stage is just a world. And all the players? Merely men and women.

I remember sitting down next to my dad as he was watching Under Siege 2 which was playing on television. Without fail he was able to predict Seagal's next move before he did it.

"So is he gonna punch him again, dad?"

"No. He'll use his knee."

And he was right. I asked him if he had seen it before, to which he replied, "No." During those few minutes of watching that movie and my dad in an almost reverent fascination, I had an epiphany: my old man was finding the movie absolutely hilarious. Yes, there was the smirk. (Often hard to see because it was hidden by his beard.) To him, this film was high comedy. Unintentional comedy is often the best kind. This may have been the first time I truly appreciated how much dad liked to watch movies just to mock them. I like doing it too.

There is a challenge to writing anything that falls into the fantasy genre because it teems with cliche and absurdity. It turns out that life does as well (more absurdity and less cliche in my opinion). But while we have to put up with it from life, we don't from our chosen forms of entertainment. One former roommate pointed out specifically why he hated certain types of movies: the heroes were unrealistically good and the villains were unrealistically evil. The saviours for a story are always the characters and we should feel able to step into their shoes as we join them in their struggles.

Pratt and I spend more time discussing them than the story, and I suspect that this is the case with any storyteller. The general shape of the story takes place, but ultimately it becomes warped around the cast, not the other way around. What I initially believed would be a straightforward tale has become twisted by the cast we created to fill it.

-Lio

A Wife's Perspective

Our posting has become more sporadic as our lives have increased in business. I’m working to rededicate myself to posting regularly. We have the first five chapters written as a rough draft and are currently going back through them. We are editing and correcting a few mistakes as well as make sure we are doing the characters correctly. It’s an interesting process, although very challenging. My wife had a chance to read the first four chapters (before we had really gone back over them) and she provided us some valuable feedback. I’ll give her a chance to write out her thoughts below:

"I have had a chance to read the first few chapters of the story Pratt and Lio are working on, and enjoyed it very much (I keep bugging them to finish the next chapter so I can read it, but they’re currently too busy polishing the first few chapters). The crew of Maso’s Trick is especially fun and it’s easy to get attached to them. I also have something of a love/hate relationship with Mateus, because he’s very interesting and yet so freaking evil.

Because these chapters are still in progress, there were a few things that needed clarification or additional details (which is why Lio and Pratt are going over them again), but the overall story is good. It certainly managed to keep my attention, and anyone who knows me will attest to what an accomplishment that is. I can’t wait for more! *nudge nudge*"

-Pratt and Je-Vé Despain

Let's Not Fight

When I was younger I was not very talkative. I tended to use a minimal amount of words and was never looking for a long conversation. Pratt, however, was constantly chattering when he was younger. Pratt tends to be significantly more outgoing and friendly. I tend to be a jerk. The result has been an ongoing joke in our creation of dialogue. Pratt creates a vibrant rain forest of spoken words, and I come in with my slash and burn technique. Between the two of us I hope we end up writing a conversation that feels real. So far the polished results are pleasing.

We are doing rewrites on the first third (or so) of Book 1. The Prologue and Chapter 1 were already quite polished and turned out to be pretty easy work. I actually enjoyed just reading them - adding a few minor adjustments as I went. It is rare that I am ever pleased with my own work. The fact that I was can only be because of Pratt.

Of course things have gotten hairier as we've pushed into the less polished chapters. They are all going to take a lot of work. I read one section in Chapter 2 that I had written and struggled to even make sense of it. That's seven consecutive paragraphs that need to be completely rewritten. I don't think I saw a salvageable sentence in there. Who could have guessed that finding meaning within words should not be like finding a needle in a haystack?

-Lio

I'm pretty sure that's not what "Humanist" means

The shocking realization came not too far into creating our map: it's a southern hemisphere world. I am not sure exactly how this happened, but it did. Throw in that humans are not even remotely the dominant race, but share a pecking order with oodles of other types of humanoids, and it makes for a strange setting. In this first story arc none of the main characters is a human. Odd. Blame this one on geography.

Though we are still on break, at least until the end of September, there is still a lot of excitement about this project. We needed the break, but are eager to share this story. Pratt's wife has been reading the completed bits and it sounds like she is enjoying it. That is a huge relief because it gives me hope that Pratt and I will not be the only ones who will enjoy what comes from this process. Honestly I am content just to write for us. At the very least I will have some killer bedtime stories to tell my kids... and reap the results of the ensuing nightmares.

Me: "Why did you wet the bed?"
Hypothetical Offspring: "I was afraid that Mateus would get me. It is so dark in this room."
Me: "It's just make believe. He doesn't exist."
Hypothetical Wife: "I'm going back to sleep, Lio. Enjoy doing the late night laundry."

Creativity is the gift that keeps on giving.

(Note: In all seriousness, I would never tell a small child any story that involves Mateus. Mateus is one of the characters that truly makes my skin crawl.)

On Trolls...

Things are on a bit of a break at the moment. It has happened before and we always manage to get back on track. Usually with some feverish bursts of writing. Starting a new semester of school always leaves me a little discombobulated until I find my groove and figure out where my times to think of ideas and write will come. As crazy as my life is at the moment, I think Pratt's is even crazier.

When we were starting to put things together I had one vision of what the Trolls would be like and Pratt had a different idea. One similarity was size. So after some discussion we decided to keep them both. Pratt got to keep the Troll moniker (jerk!), while we renamed my concept the Fomorians. Ok, so Fomorian is not super original, but then again, neither is Troll.

The Trolls are your magical, large, roundish, bulbous-nosed, jovial suckers that really jump off your Norse Mythology woodcuts. They have their oodles of gods, some for large areas and others for households. Their government is regionally led by a Gothi, basically the High Priest of the most dominant god of the pantheon in that particular geographic locale. So citizens of the large coastal city of Heorot, for example, may pray to their own individual household gods, but there is one dominant god for the city and his high priest leads the city.

The Fomorians are larger than the Trolls, but rarely stand completely upright. They tend to squat on their hind legs and lean forward, putting some weight on their knuckles, which sit comfortably on the ground. While the Trolls have round features, the Fomorians tend to have flat features and tiny noses. The Fomorians are highly resistant to magic, incredibly tough and easily the strongest of all the races. They are friendly, but tend to be seen as isolationists because they rarely leave their homeland, which is probably the most beautiful area on the planet. It is not isolationism, so much as thorough contentment with their circumstances. No one has been stupid enough to try to eject them from their homeland.

Well there is a little taste of some more of what we are putting together. It was guilt induced since I have done so little as of late.

Slow

Once again we miss a week. I don't want to point any fingers, but... I really should be more on top of this whole blog thing. Lately things have been a little slow. I had family in town and work has been busy and I've just been trying to recover mentally after work and not doing much writing. Lio has been getting ready for school to start again and that's been difficult for him as well. Not long ago we hit one of our major story milestones, and a combination of writer's block and this being busy thing has slowed down our story writing. What it hasn't slowed down is our idea development for the game we are interested in making, which I'm pretty excited about. Sadly the game is, because of a lack of funds at the moment, a long ways off, but it is still fun to think about and plan for.

The Trick

We missed an update last week and for that I am sorry. I hate to disappoint all our loyal fans (both of you). I have family in town today to see my 2 month old baby It’s been fun seeing them, but it has cut down on the amount of writing I’ve done this past week. Not that you care so much about that, you just want to know about the story.

One of the fun things about writing a story is watching it develop in unexpected ways. Lio and I had a plan of what was going to happen in the story, but we needed (and still need) to fill in details as we go. This led to some interesting additions. My favorite has to be the addition of the Maso’s Trick and especially its crew. We had to transport Keane from one coastal city to another and the mode of transportation was most naturally by boat. I didn’t think I wanted the tension of having Keane travel with strangers, so I invented Gitano, an elven captain he had traveled with before and with whom he was good friends. Lio liked Gitano so much that he made him even more involved in the story than I had originally planned. Then we started inventing crewmembers for the journey. We suddenly had a group of people that we really liked, so we found a role for them beyond just “takes Keane from point A to point B.” It was exciting, and we hope that you all enjoy the characters as much as we do.

Races updates

In the Cultures section I have added some information about most of the races, old and new, with which we have populated our world. The information is very basic, but I felt it was best to start broadly to give everyone a basic idea on all our races. Then we could reference any of the races needed when we go into the more specifics on them individually. We hope you enjoy what we have come up with.

The Favorite Child?

The book sits at over 100 pages at the moment and it still feels like we are just getting out of the gate. Feeling bogged down in writing a particular part, I decided to leap ahead, though not too far, and brought together the three central characters of the story: Keane, Moloch and Suleiman. The meeting was something that I had been looking forward to since we first started the project and it was satisfying to finally be able to do. There were some certain bits of personality that seemed to be highlighted by this first meeting and its accompanying circumstances.

At the moment Moloch is my favorite of the three. He does not move as comfortably through every social situation as Keane, but has an intuition that helps him connect with others. Though during this particular event he has some serious prejudices that he needs to overcome. One thing I love about Moloch is that he is deeply moved by art, particularly music, though he lacks any actual artistic ability, something he is unaware of.

I am looking forward to the interaction of the three throughout the rest of the story. I haven't taken time to describe Suleiman or Keane, and certainly not Moloch in any detail, but as the blog grows, Pratt and I will write more about them.

-Lio

Pratt's Perspective

I admit, this whole project did start as a video game. A video game that we would love to play, but as Lio has stated no video game is worth playing without a stage and a story. So we began to build the world and people it with little stories and bigger stories. At times the world takes on a mind of its own. It has grown beyond mere video game scopes and now requires various mediums. Right now we have two in the works: a board game/pen and paper RPG and a set of four novels. We have been focusing more on the first of the novels, but are still kicking around ideas for game mechanics.

The purpose of this blog is to let people know about the amazing projects we are working on. Our plan is to update this blog every Saturday. We will post information on the world and its cultures, pictures of the races, classic and new, that people it, short stories and folktales, status updates on our projects, and other items that we thing would be of potential interest. If you like what you see, come back on Saturdays to see what we have added and expanded. Thank you for coming and taking a moment to see this.

-Pratt

An intro...

I believe that any goal worth undertaking should be overambitious, which is probably why I fail so often to achieve my goals. This project got started about 18 months ago as I was speaking to my friend, Pratt. We were discussing video games and what we would like to see as part of a game. I think both of us are still completely in love with Bungie as a game developer, and not because of Halo, but because of Pathways Into Darkness, Marathon and most of all, Myth. The game was innovative, but more than that it had a rich story and history that the developers had created around it. Jason Jones in my estimation probably deserves some sort of demigod status.

The conclusion we reached is that great gameplay deserves the companionship of a great story. Having serious sleep issues, I have developed a habit of creating stories as I desperately try, and often fail, to fall asleep. So going into the discussion I had several story ideas, but no stage on which to put them. Pratt had several ideas for basically anything and everything and an eerie ability to come up with ideas that I often found really cool. He had a stage, and so much more. So I proposed that we combine our abilities and ideas and try to create something we could enjoy. Now we are working on a piece of sword and sorcery fiction - not a shocker - as well as anything else we can from this world we have created. It has been a lot of fun and I imagine it will continue to be.

-Lio