BOOK & GAME UPDATES: Map of Ràth Tollen, Completed Sculpts for DEFIANCE, and Progress on Edits
With pictures!
Hello!
I’ve been a bit quiet on Substack, but I’ve been busy in the studio with rather a lot of different things. Making a badly needed map. Edits on The Endless Deep, and improving how I deliver that to you. Working on Defiance: Duel in the Black Keep, in preparation for a future Kickstarter. Overcoming all the technological failures that kept popping up all month. Quality of life improvements on my online store, bardswordpress.com.
Let me catch you up!
THE ENDLESS DEEP - Map of Ràth Tollen
I’ve been working on getting this story into the shape it needs to be, and that involves finding the shape of Ràth Tollen.
Building a story world can be hard work. And the world I’m presenting in The Endless Deep is no exception. In fact, this is the most difficult to build story world I’ve ever worked on. It’s a strange, enclosed, techno-fantasy world, a decaying city enclosed on all points by a gigantic hull. And I realized as I was writing that my prior map was not detailed enough for me, personally, to keep all the locations straight in my mind.
Which is an issue I’ve never encountered before.
The locations in my other books were lots more simple, and the stories much more a linear progression from one place to another. But the scope and scale of The Chronicles of Alluvion is far, far larger than anything else I’ve ever tried to write.
So, rather than continue to keep building the story without grounding, I’ve taken some time to make a map. This version is pretty simple, and mostly for my own use, but maybe someday I’ll have a prettier version made as a cool poster.
Keeping the resolution low to protect friends from very mild spoilers, although I imagine if you zoom in you can suss out what I’ve written. As I go forward, I’m going to add more and more labels to the map, as well as some indications of scale, etc. By the time the book is finished it will be much more developed.
THE ENDLESS DEEP - Needed Edits
Now. Remember that I said in a previous post that I was going to do a 3 day speed edit?
Sigh.
Not very long after writing that post, my very, very old laptop froze up as I was working on it, and I lost an hour’s worth of editing work.
There was no warning, I was doing nothing on it other than running my word processing software, and it just froze up, and did not autosave, and that work was gone.
So I sat back and considered whether it was worth it to keep trying. And I realized that it was worth it… but not until I had my new computer. In order to write properly, I need to enter a pretty relaxed state. And the level of vigilance required to remember to save my work every five minutes is completely against the way my process works.
The spirit was willing, but the laptop was weak.
So I had to just do other things, which was deeply frustrating. I put all editing, digital art, and 3D sculpting on pause until my new computer could arrive.
Thankfully, the new computer has come. I’ve gotten it set up, and compared to the ancient piece of tech I was wringing work out of before this upgrade, my new desktop is blazing fast. Which gave me the peace of mind needed to do some careful work on The Endless Deep, including a minor overhaul of the story so far.
Again, I will avoid spoilers here. But I realized that my fast pace of delivery (attempting to deliver 1 episode a week) is too fast for the kind of story that I really want to tell. There were themes that I was dropping, characters that I wasn’t giving enough time to develop fully, and worldbuilding opportunities that I was missing in a race to meet a deadline that I put upon myself.
In a different story world, it might be doable to writing quickly, but in The Chronicles of Alluvion, I’m building a lot of the sets from scratch, as it were. And at the pace I was attempting to go… well, to continue the metaphor: the sets were not finished, the actors weren’t getting their lines, the lighting wasn’t right, and the continuity had all sorts of issues.
Not what I’m about. Having learned from my failures, I’m making some changes.
I’m going to reduce the expectations on myself for the rate of delivery. Obviously, I can’t deliver this once a week without compromising on quality. So I’m going to aim for one or two high quality deliveries a month to paid subscribers, giving myself the time needed to build out the story and the world, stay on theme, develop characters, let ideas ferment properly, etc. etc.
I’m looking forward to sharing that journey with you.
Progress on DEFIANCE: DUEL IN THE BLACK KEEP
The portion of my brain that is responsible for writing can produce a certain amount every day, and that amount is going up as I keep working at it.
Meanwhile, sculpting and visual art seem to utilize a different part of my brain, and, as I lean more and more into my creative side, and figuring out who and what I am, I realize that visual art is a necessary part of my life’s work. So this week I’ve opted to put more and more time into developing those skills.
And then… my stylus stopped working.
At first, it was just acting squirrelly. But then it failed completely. So, resourceful bard that I am, I did the basic troubleshooting things. I turned the tablet off and on again, unplugged it and plugged it back it, turned my brand new desktop off and on again, reinstalled the tablet drivers, etc. etc.
Nothing.
Turns out, it was a hardware issue.
See those two teeny little coppery wires leading to the green circuit board?
You can’t even see it in this photo, but one of them broke away from the solder, which is the little silvery glob that should be connecting it to the board.
For scale, please see the tip of the stylus, which is comparable to the tip of a standard ballpoint pen. It’s tiny. But without that wire properly connected, my stylus is about as functional as a lollipop stick. With no lollipop.
A replacement stylus is about $50 and a week or two or three of waiting for it to ship But I do not have a week or two or three to wait around for a stylus, and I do not have $50 to throw at a stylus.
I realized I had to teach myself how to solder.
So I went to Harbor Freight and bought a $3.99 solder and a $3.99 length of lead-free rosin-core solder, and got to work.
The solder is ugly and lumpy. But the important thing is that it worked, and nobody can see it because it is now hidden safely inside my stylus.
I would not recommend that you use a Harbor Freight soldering iron for something this tiny. I’m not sure I’d recommend a Harbor Freight soldering iron at all. And I’d definitely not recommend you start your entire soldering career with a repair this delicate. But I didn’t have a budget for a nicer soldering iron, nor time to practice on something else, so I chose to rely on prayers and a steady hand from all the miniature painting I’ve done.
It’s a miracle that I didn’t melt the circuit board into non-functionality. Miracles are kind of how my life story seems to run. God is good.
Anyway. What were we talking about? Oh yeah, Defiance, my game.
Post stylus repair, I completed an additional miniature to include in the digital box set.
In the story of DEFIANCE, the player is trying to protect their wounded friend. Some reliable people who are smarter at game development than I am suggested that it would be important to the story experience of the player to have a physical representation of the wounded friend; to drive home the stakes of the story unfolding before them.
Story is the central focus of what I’m doing here, so I took their advice and added one more miniature. And with that, the stakes of DEFIANCE are a lot clearer, and all the miniatures needed are complete.
I also made a subtle upgrade to the Giant, to match the Eotenas represented in the story world that Defiance shares with my novel, Oathbound. See what I’ve added?
Bone spurs on the wrists, shaped a little bit like a karambit.
It’s a small adjustment, but after sculpting all the figures needed, my skills had leveled up enough to make it easy to add. I’m becoming more and more comfortable with Blender, and with my new computer, I can sculpt new models much faster.
I’ll be sculpting more figures (and maybe even locations!) from my stories, which will go up in the shop, in some form, when they’re ready.
GOING FORWARD FROM HERE
To wrap this post up, here’s what’s I’m focusing on right now.
Upgrades for The Endless Deep, the first 70k words, which will be delivered as a single ebook to all paid subscribers.
Creation of the continued story of The Endless Deep, as well as new drawings and lore, keeping to the higher standard of quality, and slower release schedule.
Complete the entire digital release package for Defiance: Duel in the Black Keep, including the rulebook and all the other little bits and bobs.
Prep for the Defiance Kickstarter (Early February is the target I’m aiming for).
All the other things needed to keep the studio open and running, including numberous side projects, commissions, repairs, etc.
It’s gonna be awesome.
— Cael