A few weeks ago, I successfully completed the novel that ends the series The Epic of Old. It has gone through proofreading, and I am likely going to make one last round of editing to tweak certain details in the story. While that is going on, I have also been editing the five other books in the series. In some cases, I have just updated the formatting, but the first two short stories have basically been rewritten. The events presented haven't really changed much, but there is more content that adds a bit more detail about what is happening. There are also some poems that I completely changed just to make them sound better. Why was this necessary?
The first book started as a way to connect separate poems into a somewhat cohesive story, and they were made when I first started writing poetry several years ago just after college. I experimented a lot in free verse (which is hard to do well), and some of the results just weren't up to par compared to what I can make now. Making adjustments to those first poems can be problematic, because it alters the original source of the material. In fact, it is from so long ago that I cannot even remember what information or emotion I was intending to portray in some of the lines. A good example was The Philosopher's Plea in book two. It had a sporadic rhyming scheme, introduced elements of fantasy that were unnecessary, such as mermaids and trolls, and simply had lines that droned on near the end. So I altered it by adding a simple AABB rhyming scheme, and then organized it so that the meter increased by one syllable every two lines. At a glance, it doesn't look too different, but it reads far better. It also incorporates real themes that the character would actually discuss.
Overall, I need to make sure the first group of stories are good enough to get people interested in the later books (without completely altering them), which I am actually more proud of having written. I think book six is the best one I've made so far. There is a far bigger focus on individual characters. The setting does not change drastically. All of the events happen within two months compared to several years in many of the other books. There is a clear main character. And most importantly, there is finally more showing than telling. A big problem with the stories is that the narration bits are too lengthy, creating info dumps that many readers probably don't care about. Perhaps it's not as big of an issue as I think it is, given how short some of the stories are and how different they look compared to similar narratives, but it is still an issue I am working on fixing.
Some of the formatting issues I am fixing are mainly things of consistency. I had to indent some things differently. Some sections didn't use quotation marks correctly. The chapter heading for every book is changing. There are more sections in the stories that actually read like normal novels, at least where dialogue is concerned, but I am not ditching the old style I used. It is helpful to illustrate a new shift in time or location, especially when not a lot of action is occurring. Also, I noticed that the name of the fantasy planet (Patmos) was only introduced in book three, so I had to sprinkle that in books one and two. I also made it more clear that Hlendvlask was one particular continent and not the world itself. Then, there was also the issue of the appendices at the end of book three. This section originally had some information about the series that I wanted to share with the reader to help book 3 make more sense, but it revealed a bit more than necessary, especially concerning what the gods were capable of and what predicament they were in. When I completed book 4, most of the section got cut, but I still had to include the info about the calendar system. This information recently got condensed and moved to the end of book one as an addendum.
I have no idea when I am going to republish all of the stories (along with publishing book 6), but I know I am doing them all at once. I currently just have the last two stories to look through again, so I estimate that it will all be done in another week. Only time will tell. So what is the plan after all of that is done? Well, I'm still working on the map, which is a fun little side project, but I also have more short stories planned, perhaps approaching the length of the first two books. It would be a series of short stories with a separate series title than the Epic of Old, but I have to make it known that they are from the same universe. They would also need to probably be read after the original series, because these stories would contain certain spoilers that would ruin some of the things revealed in book six. Yet it is a project definitely worth pursuing, because the ideas and events behind these stories are interesting enough to write about. They are about as good as the same idea that forced me to complete book six, which was the longest thing I have ever written.
Once I am ready to get everything published, I will announce it here. It shouldn't be too long now.
