Officially, on December 30, 2019, amidst busy holiday activities and the search for a lit agent, I began the second book, though it has two previous beginnings which I’ll cover below.

For those of you following the creation of Tildy’s story – and I thank you for that! – we now travel hundreds of miles north, to the borders of the Frozen Blight where lives Tildy’s brother in the ice fortress of Yrrengard.

Similar to his sister, Samor was also presumed dead but smuggled from the capital city of Evereign. Whereas she was lost in the wild, he escaped under a dead child’s name to be raised by new parents who will always see him as a reminder of the son they lost. To add to their bitterness, they are raising the heir to the throne, a weighty duty that overshadows any affection they might feel toward the baby.

Tentatively entitled:

SAMOR LASTNAME and the WARLOCK OF NEVERMORE.

Obviously, considering I have a placeholder surname for my protagonist, it’s a working title. But it’s one I’ve had in place for two years or so, which leads me back to my point about beginnings.

As with all the books in this project, I’ve been writing out scenes and character notes, capturing location and people names, and other miscellany since I started working on Book 1. It’s one of the reasons the first project took four years: I needed to understand where I was going, who lived in my world, and why things were the way they were.

For the Prince’s first book, I’d been more focused on some of these details because his story is often a compare/contrast version of Tildy’s. So, as I made a major decision in her life, I would often jot down a complementary plot point for him. Or have him make the opposite decision. It’s a bit “nature vs. nurture”, but it will be a subtle thing and certainly written without the conscious intent to prove that one is more influential than the other.

I also used his book to recycle some scenes, characters, and storylines that didn’t fit in Tildy’s story. It taught me a valuable writing lesson.

You don’t have to put everything in the first book.

…although, at 188,000 words, it might feel like I did.

Anyway, back to the point. The Prince’s project goes back even further than Tildy’s . Nearly twenty-five years back, to be specific. I had more than a hundred thousand words before I set it – and my fledgling writing career – aside. It was a difficult decision, and it weighs on me still, but I chose family stability over what I considered a gamble. Fortunately for me, every few years I made sure that the text was converted to the latest word processing software…because I still thought I had something worth getting back to.

And as of December 30, I did.

Here’s to a successful New Year for all of us, and for me, the return to Samor’s story, one that is filled with Dragons and threadwolves; blizzard demons, Ogren, and warpallahs; and history, myth, and magic.

Good luck with your writing in 2020!

Mike

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© Michael Wallevand, January 5, 2020