Skeltouch Status: Cutting, and Writing

Things are progressing, though not as fast as I would like. I have written some new text and re-edited some old text, added an appendix, and replaced the prologue, but I have also given in to the nagging feeling that a fair chunk of what I had was unnecessary and made some cuts. As such, the word count went back down to as low as 32,000, but as of today, it’s back up to 39,154

One big part of what I cut was a backstory on a character mentioned briefly in book 1. We will get to know him better in the upcoming book 2, and I had shoehorned his background into the book as a prologue, but I’ve always been a little uncomfortable with that decision. I recently wrote a much more focused prologue that is shorter, more impactful, and more relevant to the core story. This will be much better than merely illuminating a single side character’s history.

Writing these backstories always helps ensure I have a character with depth that makes sense, but it also creates content that is hard to share. The first problem is that wizards in my world are very cagy about their own history, to minimize the chance of anyone figuring out their true name. A second, more practical reason is that if I just dump everything into the book, it will be a very slow story.

I’m contemplating collecting these into a collection of short stories so I can share them. I wrote a quick draft of a prospective preface/introduction to such a volume. I don’t promise I’ll ever publish it, but let me know if a series of short origin stories for wizards sounds good to you (or not). There are several other ways in which I might release such stories, but this is the idea I’m currently kicking around.

As for Lore posts for subscribers, I’ve got more material, and I think the next thing to be released will probably be a rough draft of the appendix that details the curriculum for students at the Wizards Academy. It doesn’t give away any of the plot or characters, just some background lore. Sign up and stay tuned. If you miss the previous one, signing up will get you access to that too.

Also, here’s an image I drew relating to the backstory that was cut…