Wednesday 17 January 2024

#54 Snow Day + Things We Forget

 Happy Blog Day Everyone!

Today's topic is an odd one to be sure, and, as usual, a massive blunder on my part (insert the sweat drop emoji here). Before we get to that though, let's check in with the Comic Tales of Brennan and Riz!

The Comic Tales of Brennan and Riz

Who doesn't love a snow day (aside from those who have to work/drive in it as I'm so told). Seems Riz gets a bit too carried away! Hope Brennan has a portable heater handy.

To be fair, I did have a different idea for this week, but with the impending forecast of snow that was due (and turned out to be a very light shower) this seemed more fun.

Things We Forget

So, this week, I was taking part in #7DayTale over on Twitter (X) and I got to the part where I got to post a snippet of the Work in Progress I was working on (Avalon Tales)

Here is the piece in question:


Nothing out of the ordinary eh?

Wrong.

You, see, despite going over this numerous times in November there was a detail that I'd completely overlooked as I rushed off to try and get the manuscript finished. That detail was Isabelle’s dear grandma.

You might think: That's not a big deal right? Well, the problem is that I made the character so important to Isabelle at this junction, heck, following the thread I set up, she would have spent more time with her grandma than her own father (explaining their estrangement that I was aiming for at the beginning of the novella). She would have been the guiding light for the young girl. I even remembered that I'd set the grandmother up as a former member of Avalon herself (there was a hereditary theme in how you could end up being in the organisation, just as how noble families children wound up becoming knights in medieval times). While I can't access the original notes I made, I believe this was where Isabelle was going to get a lot of her information about Avalon from.

So what happened then? How can a character be introduced as a seemingly main player (well, main support, but you get the idea) and then just disappear without much notice? Because I'm an idiot who completely forgot about her. There wasn't even a token: "she died off page before the adventure began", because that would have made too much sense. It probably also didn't help that the main story has changed so much, and with it, any semblance of continuity that I was hoping for.

There is a good silver lining in all of this: namely that I can fix it fairly easy once I restart the whole thing. I have a couple of ideas where to take the character and ensure that she plays the part she was destined for (I clearly must have had a plan for her in the first place since I created her).

Next to that issue I found, I came across another one. This one had ambition behind it but, after a long think on it, I can't see a way forward with it in terms of the story that I want to tell with these novellas. The original inspiration was that a certain blue eyed demon merchant was going to be heavily involved with Isabelle’s accident, working in his usual mysterious ways. However...this caused a problem, namely there wouldn't be any resolution to this thread within the three stories. Gabriel was set to appear a couple of times, but in small guest appearances, lest he actually show up the main villains. Ideally, I needed her accident to tie in with the greater story threads so she could find some solace from it all, hence reluctantly, I've chosen to ultimately exorcise Gabriel from the prologue part, allowing him to go back to bring an observer in Isabelle’s story while he does his own thing in the background.

Upshot of this will allow me to get closer to the stand alone nature I wanted this novella series to be while also having some connective tissue to Daemon Soul through certain character appearances (Gabriel, Marie, Serena). It was a bad idea of mine to force people to have to jump to the Daemon Soul series in order to find the conclusion of a fairly important plot point.

I think that's enough waffling from me this week.

Till next time,

Keep on writing!

Peter James Martin

Quick Links

The Strange Tales of Brennan and Riz Volume 1

The Strange Tales of Brennan and Riz Book 1: A Boy and A Rat

The Strange Tales of Brennan and Riz Volume 2

Malarkey's Imaginomnibus Volume 1

Malarkey's Imaginomnibus Fade to Noir

Malarkey's Imaginomnibus Hubble Bubble

Harvey Duckman Presents Volume 13


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