Returned to Against the Riders this week.  In both parts (and by the end I expect word count, though looking back I wrote some  long parts for End of War), this series has become the largest story I’ve written here on Fey and Bard.  I’ll save most of my thoughts for once the series is done, as I’ve done with the other long stories, but I can say with confidence that with Brokel meeting with Quartes next week we’ll be heading into the endgame of that story with probably only two to three parts left to go.

Which is to say that my mind is turning towards what I want to be writing next.  I had mentioned at the start of the year that I’d like to spend more time with stories of Quartes and Keto encountering and dealing with Fey.  That remains driven by my desire to flesh out that portion of my world more and I expect to have more tales like “Dark Forest Fey” in the near future (in fact have notes on several such stories).  However, I’ve also been thinking about the nature of my storytelling here on Fey and Bard.

When I started the website there was a bit of an underlying thought that in writing all these drop stories I would not only be honing my writing but may also hit some point where I could pull together a bunch of the stories, write some connecting material, and pretty easily put together a novel.  While I do think certain scenes I’ve written here are likely to have some version show up in a larger novel, the odds that a novel would come primarily from material on the website isn’t something I really expect anymore.  The reason for that is that I’ve come to realize the style of stories are different.

I think what I’m telling here are to novels what a weekly tv show is to a movie.  I write vignettes, and even my multi-part stories are more like episodes of a tv show completing a story across multiple weeks.  The characters arcs and progression that are vital for a novel to work aren’t as necessary in the stories that I’m telling.  While I do think I tell stories of Quartes and Keto at different times in their lives and relationship, with their behaviors reflecting those different periods, I’m not really focused on specific arcs for them.  Rather, the stories I tell are largely self-contained.  It’s probably a skillset I could work on to weave more character development into the tales I tell but for now this is where I’m at.  It’s also something I could help work on by working on the organization of the site to try and put the stories in some kind of in-setting chronological order but getting into that is for another time.

This is to say, two things.  One is that in addition to Fey focused stories, I think we can expect more stories with Quartes and Keto, and I think others, going on adventures around the Provinces and exploring more of those lands.  The Provinces are another area of my setting that I would like to flesh out more.  I’d like to see more culture, religion, and intrigue reflected in these lands.  The second is that what words I write that don’t end up on this website are going to heads towards writing something larger.  I’m thinking maybe not quite a novel at this time but I’d like to write something longer that I can look at submitting to magazines and sites for consideration to be published.  So, I guess expect to hear more about that as I head down that journey.

As noted up at the top, we should see Brokel and Quartes meet for the first time this weekend and until then…

Go forth and do good things,

Sean