About: MAKING THE HORIZON
Well, that's the rub.
I'm not one to believe in designing covers for books that may very well never exist, or advertising for something without an end date. I drew the above image on a whim, thinking I wanted something visual to associate with my discussions about this pet project of mine. This cover, like everything else in this project, was done predominantly for my enjoyment; what started as a simple symbol ran away with me. But I have to say, this cover, though the names may change, the art may be replaced, did successfully make the project feel more real.
"What is the project, my deal little staller?"
Making the Horizon is a manuscript, The Sandbysk Novels a series set in the same world. It is my baby on the side, and I plan to tell you about it often.
It is dangerous to talk too much about works in progress, especially when there is no guarantee about it being available to the public. Amanda Hocking once described in her blog the way that readers responded so sadly and enthusiastically when she would mention a work that never came to fruition.
I try not to mention something I’ll never
finish, even in my personal life. I only really talk about things if I consider
them more likely. Making the Horizon is
not likely. It is a huge undertaking, I have been slowly working on any writing for
the last few years, struggling to finish first drafts here and there. Writing novels has been hard period, and Making the Horizon is the first of many books.
This means it’s less likely to be completed. It means that it is less likely
to sell to a publisher. All in, all, it’s just less likely.
On the other hand, I write these blogs in the way
I’d like to read them; I want to hear about writers’ processes. I want to read
more about the books they made and how decisions came into being. Not only
that, but reading these things makes me more interested in buying them,
ultimately.
Making the
Horizon is the first novel of what I’m currently calling a compendium
series. The ‘series’ features books set in the same world, exploring the effects
of one story to the next. The characters and plots are different, the setting
evolving over time. I want as little interaction between the protagonists and
possible, most stories being several generations apart. Yet you get to learn
about the history of the world, see castles built, thrive, and destroyed, and
watch how the world has grown after the gods have disappeared. In the same vein
as my Stories of the Wyrd, I
hope that the novels can be read out of order, references to the past only
being delightful coloring.
The first book is an origin of the gods and
Sandbysk itself. It starts with nothing and leaves the foundations for myths
and legends that the people will talk about, and change, over the history.
The idea for Making
the Horizon (The current title) came in several doses. One
was when I read a graphic novel, a manga, in which a story of two ancient
lovers was told in passing. I wanted to see what had actually transpired between
them, how the myth had changed over the years, and meet the ‘real’ people
behind it. That image was the seeding for the Goddess Havana and the God of
Protection.
I listened to the song “We Found Love” by Rhianna
and the titular lyric, “We found love in a hopeless place,” inspired an
image of two people walking in a desolate wasteland, isolated, trapped, but
with each other. This inspired the first visual of the book in which The Muse
and The Hunter first find themselves dropped into the sandbox.
I also played Minecraft
quite a bit at the time, and liked the idea of having to start over from
scratch, to reset your life and to create and change a world to suit you,
working from nothing to something.
I started the story, writing the second chapter
after Rose, The Muse, has been stolen swiftly from the streets of New York
(long before I ever actually lived there), but I stopped at around 10,000 words. The first scene in which Rose was taken was a beginning written long before, a book that never became anything. I had thought it would be about an alien species who destroyed the Earth in a Noah's flood sort of way, taking some of the most skilled of humans to start a new civilization, but became uninspired shortly after. Later I continued it with Horizon in mind, but again didn't get far, for various reasons. Partially, I hadn’t developed the plot well enough
yet and I didn’t like the way they met the man who would later become the God
of Risk.
Four years passed until I started
getting through Cassandra Clare’s Mortal
Instruments and all the author’s other series, and found myself adoring the
potential of writing several books in the same world featuring different characters.
I was also getting back into the web comic, Girl
Genius, and yearned to see all the different stories about the world’s
history, especially the heroic tales of the protagonist’s father and uncle, the
Heterodyne Boys. Wouldn’t it be great to have been there for the birth of the
castle? To know the real story behind the gossip? To be able to see these
things for yourself?
After getting back from Australia last year, the
first thing I did was get to Universal Studios to get to the Harry Potter exhibit
that wasn’t ready when I left America (potentially for the last time). I found
myself obsessive and mesmerized with the iconic images. Hogwarts, Hogsmeade, Diagon
Alley, and all the things that come along with it? Beautiful, grounded. I knew
that I wanted world building to be improved in my works, to be more impactful,
more thorough. But how do you do that?
So, I had been toying with the idea of Making the Horizon for several years,
but put it off because I didn’t want to commit to something that big with that
low chance of being readable to the public. Horizon
could, potentially, be a standalone, but the idea works best with having
many stories together. It’s pretty much the point.
Yet when looking at my writing and what I wanted
to do differently, the fact that the slow and sporadic way I had been working
through the last few years sucking some of the immersion I had in my own work,
I decided, why not go for it? Why not, at the very least, start planning? Write
what you want to write, I think, and I want to write something like this.
I’m trying some new things with this compendium.
I’m drawing more to get some stronger visuals in my mind. I’m outlining and
planning to help make for a crisper plot. I’m developing the world as I go, and
the nature of this book makes it easier to recognize what I don’t know, have
reasons behind strange cultural choices.
Over the next few months I’m plan to be posting
about the gods as they come—how they were developed, the questions I have about
them—and hopefully, through that, you and I both can maintain the excitement I
feel right now.
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