93: Everything & More

9/7/2015

I just got done with Chapter 13: The Search for Bakar. This one was not only the longest chapter in Part One (13 pages), but it took me three days of trial-and-error trying to get a hook on it. Took me a whole day to figure out that this would be a search for Bakar after he’d been beaten by his father.

Originally, I thought it would be four pages or so of Tamal getting to know his adoptive parents – maybe with him spying on a shamanistic ritual to determine the nature of the four-tailed comet, which would be a mirror of sorts to Siona’s tambiko-hori ritual later. But I had no teeth in that idea. Nothing I wanted to do would work within the framework of the surrounding chapters.

Then when I hit upon a search for Bakar, and how I could use that to unify The Children of Batu (except for Diallo), I knew I had to use that idea. And I’m going to write the follow-up for that (Chapter 18: Friends) tomorrow.

But even after I got the search for Bakar idea, it took me two more days to get a handle on it. I even wrote 2 ½ pages that I ended up throwing away as useless and starting over – the first time that’s ever happened to me. Usually, I don’t start until I get my hook, my milieu, the POV, and I’m excited and certain about where it’s going. So, even with crappy first attempts, I’m still able to mold and reshape things until I get them right. Not this time. It was all crap beyond redemption through rewrites.

That took the juice right out of my mojo.

So, I jumped ahead out of desperation and rewrote all of Siona’s tambiko-hori scenes. But when I came back to The Search for Bakar, it still wasn’t clicking for me. I don’t ever remember having so much trouble figuring out an interesting angle to enter into a chapter before. I blamed it on the fact that I was too limited from having to squeeze it into a pre-existing framework, severely inhibiting my creative options. Which was true.

But as soon as I dropped Tamal as the POV and gave it to Joyul, everything fell into place. I wanted to give it to Tamal because he only had one brief POV in Chapter 7: The Boy in the Tree. He was in serious need of fleshing out, so I was determined to give the POV to him. But when I looked at Chapter 8: Guardian of the Gate and saw how well Bakar came alive even when it was Dougga’s POV, I realized I might be able to do Tamal better from the outside than the inside.

The Search for Bakar was a tough chapter for Tamal, what with his mother just dying and this sixth sense thing now kicking in. It’s too much drama and morose moodiness inside his head, making me want to slit my own wrists. But do you know whose head is never depressing? Joyul’s. Not because she’s a Pollyanna or because she’s Joyful, but because she’s tough and funny. And when mixed with Dougga for contrast, she shines.

So, Joyul was the only thing that made this chapter possible for me.

I’m not sure why it turned out so long though, maybe because of the logistics of transitioning them through five different backdrops: the village skywalks, Bakar’s hutment, the hub, the stairway tree, and the storage huts at the base of the tree. I didn’t want to just breeze through all those backdrops without creating a sense of place. Plus, there was a lot of dialogue (thank god), which eats up the pages. But I still had no idea it would be that long.

Once I got my hook of Joyul as the POV (and thought it would only be seven pages or so), with every segment of the chapter I finished I kept thinking it would only be a couple more pages before it would be done. At seven pages there were only going to be a couple pages left to do. Same thing at nine and ten pages. It wasn’t until page eleven that I was right about there only being two pages left.

It wore me out, even though the body of it wasn’t that hard to write. It was only hard to get started… and then to stop. I’ve had much harder chapters that fought me from beginning to end, but none were as hard to get a grip on as this one. It was driving me bonkers. Hours of pacing and writing notes and chapter outlines. Nothing was helping.

But it’s done now, and having just reread it in its final first-draft form, I’m proud and pleased with it. It did everything I wanted, and more. That’s all I need from my children to satisfy me as a parent. Everything I want, plus more.

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Present-Day Reflection

8/26/2026

This may be the secret of how I’m able to keep going with this work of writing the Batu Saga, no matter how hard it gets or what sacrifices it might require. It’s the only thing in my life that keeps giving back more than I ask from it. The world I began to build back in 2009 has taken on a life of its own, growing into something much larger than myself – surpassing all expectations.

It also serves as an anchor, keeping me tethered to my values regardless of the shifting weather; providing me a sense of purpose and meaning – a reason to get out of bed in the morning. What began as a creative path has become a calling that never ceases to enrich and surprise me. It gives me everything I really need to be happy, and more.

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92: Dougga’s Introduction

8/23/2015

I just finished Chapter Four with Dougga hiding under his mother’s platform. It took me two days. One day was spent going through my notes and selecting the tidbits I’d need, and thinking about how to approach this and what precisely needs to take place.

The whole concept of placing him under his mother’s hut, hiding within the scaffolding there, came just from browsing through my village architecture notes. I tried putting in a monitor lizard that ate a camouflaged stick-insect, but it didn’t fit so I had to cut it.

The actual writing of it took all of the second day, though the chapter was only 4 ½ pages long. I spent a couple hours per paragraph trying to get the scenery and Dougga’s physical descriptions right, but the dialogue went quickly.

I love how it turned out. Some bits were even better than I hoped for on the final reading. Always a nice thing.

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Present-Day Reflection

8/25/2026

Dougga is one of those characters for whom I have a really firm grasp on who he is and how he’s going to change over the course of the series. Drastic changes, though more in terms of behavior than in his core nature. His core remains relatively stable, but how he responds to his circumstances, and the behavioral choices he makes, will gradually shift to the polar opposite of what they are in his childhood.

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91: Reimagining & Restructuring

8/21/2015

Well, I made some big decisions. I decided to rewrite all of Part One: Wings of Providence, in order to make it a stand-alone book of 85,000-100,000 words. First though, I spent a week doing a detailed character analysis of Diallo, Alena, Siona, Makoa, Tamal, Dougga, and Bakar. Which included detailed physical descriptions, background, and a character-revealing questionnaire for each. I needed this as a basis for a new beginning so that I know my characters much more intimately than before.

Alena had the most drastic overhaul from my original vague and bland conceptions of her. She’s a real person now, not just the nice girl. All of them are much more defined now, and as a result both the writing and the story are much stronger.

I just finished my reimagined Chapter Three today, which actually combined what used to be scenes two and three – Diallo falling from the tree. I really wasn’t looking forward to going backward to this material, it was so played out and dead for me in my mind. But I actually pulled off a minor miracle and turned the whole beginning of the Alena section into something interesting and rich, every bit as good as my most recent work with The Shadow Falls.

I began by pinpointing the premise for my first book, Wings of Providence. Then I tried to figure out how what I had already (Alena, Kumbella, The Fever, and Twa Yal-Jukun) fulfills the premise and story I need to tell for a first book. As a result, the fourth Part: Twa Yal-Jukun is being cut out. That’s 70 pages of work discarded. But I’m sure I’ll be cannibalizing large segments of it, so it won’t be a total loss.

Also, I’m combining what used to be Alena and Kumbella into a single Part One. And I’ll be using The Fever as Part Four now. That means I have Part Two and Three to write from scratch. Part Three will be the quest for the ghost frog, which was only alluded to in my original draft.

Doing all this resolves two critical problems that have been plaguing me for quite a while. The first problem solved is that my books will no longer be massive tomes that would make publishing them problematic. And the second problem solved is that I’ll be able to more easily say what the story is about in each book. It won’t just be a life story (biography) with vaguely related Parts built around a vague notion of a prophecy. I now have a clear conception of “what the story is about” on multiple levels – that of the series as a whole (now eight books long), and as individual books.

What I originally conceived as Parts are now books, and what I used to call chapters (and then episodes) are now Parts. So, each book will still have four Parts, but there will be many chapters now per Part.

What I’m losing with all this is the aesthetic symmetry of maintaining the structure of fours. There are not just four books anymore. There aren’t just four chapters per Part anymore. It also lengthens the whole series and the scope of the stories to tell. Which means more work for me.

Though, maybe not. Because this disregard for keeping to four books means I don’t have to write what was going to be the fourth book, about their exodus and search for a new home. I can end the series with the destruction of their villages and their departure from Kamaria to find a new home. The story of the series then is about the last generation of the Batu as a tribe, not about how or if they’re able to rebuild elsewhere.

Not having to write that story is a huge burden removed. I love exodus stories, but I wasn’t looking forward to writing one. Especially when most of my main characters will have been dead or too old to be viable by then. Alena was the only important one who was going to survive into the fourth book (though like Moses, not surviving to reach the promise land herself). But now with eight books, Mogai will be dying in the last one, as he should.

There are other benefits of this new organization as well. For one thing, it means Book Two: Left Behind, is already done. It was always my strongest Part in terms of having a unified and complete story arc. Its ending is the only possible problem. Ending the book with the protagonist failing (actually, he fails repeatedly throughout the book) is not exactly going to endear me to readers. It wasn’t’ intended originally as a stand-alone, so I have some tweaking to do to make it suitable. But it’s roughly 98% finished as is. Unlike the first book.

It’s hard to say for sure with all the rewriting yet to do, but I’d guess I got 25-50% of the first book done. One whole Part has to be made up from scratch; another has a mix of pieces needing inventing. The other two are mostly rewrites, or as I call them: reimaginings – because they’re so dramatically different, there’s only a bare skeleton of the original that is at all recognizable. All for the better.

All this means I will have two books done, along with a quarter of the third, within the next three months. So, even if by some miracle I could talk a publisher into combining two books in one volume (as Tolkien did), I will still be done with my first volume in three months.

When It’s all said and done, this new structure and reimagining of the first book will make the work a lot better. It’s already so much better, just with the first three chapters I got done already. I had to invent Chapter Two out of thin air (the jola meeting), which turned out well. I needed it to break up the string of chapters with Diallo on the river. But it’s also good for establishing the jola up front, the characterizations of all four jola members, and adding support to the series plotline of the prophecy. I’m at a point now where I need to make up another chapter from scratch, this time using Dougga overhearing that the end of the world is coming. It will probably be a short chapter.

With the one I just finished today (Diallo falling from the tree), I originally had the second half from Alena’s POV, but I used almost nothing from that since Alena’s character and physical description completely changed. Instead of Kiza being the one to take Diallo’s loincloth and tormenting him, now it’s Alena who does it. And instead of Alena putting a halt to it because she’s such a goody two-shoes, it’s Kiza now who makes Alena give Diallo his loincloth back

It’s just so much more interesting, and the writing is much better now, too. Also, the play on various themes is better. There’s a much better sense that the story is about something. It’s all unified and tied neatly together, and the geographical shifts from chapter to chapter is much nicer. Having had multiple chapters in a row set in the same location was tedious.

I’m extremely happy with my first chapter now, and it used to be my worst. There’s a much stronger sense of place and atmosphere. Before it was just reeds and mud with two boys squabbling. Bringing in the log bridge, and starting out with Diallo instead of the heron, just changed the whole look and feel for the better.

It’s going to be a much stronger book and series than it was going to be if I stayed on the course I had been on two weeks ago. This reimagining and restructuring isn’t just a rewrite, it’s a whole new ball game. And I’ll still be able to meet my deadline for having my first book done by the end of this year. In fact, I should have two books done.

I’m not sure what to do about The Yara (prologue). It speaks to the story of the series and to Wings of Providence, but it’s no longer really necessary as a background for Mosai’s withdrawal – if it ever was necessary. But it’s also 35 pages and the scenes are not able to be split into separate chapters due to all the flashbacks. Besides, you can’t break a prologue into chapters, unless…

What if The Yara was the first Part of Book One? Could it be made to work thematically with its premise and theme structure? Is it too short to be its own Part? How would this affect the time structure (every Part spans four years)?

This is going to take some thought. More big decisions. But in the meantime, I’m still writing every day, all day. And loving it.

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Present-Day Reflection

8/24/2026

All of this reimagining and restructuring reminds me of what I’ve read about Frank Herbert’s process of writing the first Dune novel. Originally conceived as Dune World (published as a three-part serial in Analog magazine between December 1963 and February 1964), its first incarnation was a mere shadow of what it would eventually become. Not just rewriting an entire story but recreating it from the ground up. This may be the only way to have work that has a sense of depth that feels real. Everything has a history to it and is built upon things that were once themselves substantial in their own way.

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90: Fundamental Flaws & Changes in Structure

8/7/2015

I’m in my own place now, living alone with nothing to do but write. It’s perfect for my Batu work. Better than ever before because I don’t have any friends and nowhere to go all day. I have books, but they get no more than an hour a day. Usually nothing at all.

I moved in on July 27th and have been working hard ever since. Loving it. From 7AM until midnight or later. With only an hour’s nap in the afternoon, and 15-minute breaks for meals and a shower, I’ve been writing 15-16 hours a day for the last week.

What I’ve accomplished in that time is the rewriting of Episode 9: The Shadow Falls, which is comprised of chapters 83-98. Which reminds me, I’ve redesignated my novel’s structure so that what I used to call chapters are now Episodes, and what I used to call scenes are now chapters. The reason for this is purely psychological. I personally loathe reading long chapters, so why was I writing a book with chapters 60-100 pages long? Everything is already broken down into seven-page scenes (average), so it’s easily redesignated and the perfect length for a chapter. Nothing has changed except how I label things.

Anyway, there were 16 chapters in Episode 9: The Shadow Falls, and though I already had the first draft done before coming to Walla Walla, the rewrite of all 16 chapters entailed a lot of revision and additions. An Additional chapter was added, and one was split into two, so the original 14 is now 16. It took all day, every day, to get it done, but I believe The Shadow Falls is now up to par with the previous eight episodes. If not better.

I’m really excited about the quality, and I think as my skills improve it may make the earlier Episodes look pretty shabby. Which means I’ll have a lot of work to do on the computer to bring everything up to a consistent level. Though it’s not just my craftsmanship with language that is improving, but also my imagination and the nuances of environment and the development of drama. Things are getting richer and deeper, which is wonderful.

I really believe the most crucial ingredient in achieving this is to have my own private space with no distractions whatsoever. No job, no bills, no family or friends (aside from the occasional correspondence), no TV – nothing that needs doing or requiring my attention. Unfortunately, this won’t last long. I’m safe through November, but I may have to move again after that. So, if I want to finish my first book by 2016, I only have four safe months to do it.

This last chapter I finished was number 98, and I have 641 pages written.

Also, Guma is now dead. And I like the direction Siona is going at the moment – off the deep end. Like Joyul before her in The Kulu, Siona is promising to upstage my main characters. Probably a bad sign.

Speaking of bad signs, I was just reading another book on writing fiction this morning, and I learned a nice trick to discover whether I have a plotting and a premise-building problem or not. If I’m able to rearrange my chapters or episodes into a different sequence, then I’m in trouble. It’s a sign that the story doesn’t develop but is merely a collection of random (though interesting) events. The good news is that Part Two: Left Behind (Episodes 5-8) is totally connected where the episodes cannot be reshuffled without everything being changed.

In Episode Five, Diallo’s losing the kulu leads him to run away. That leads to Episode Six, where he is lost and Mosai goes after him and gets killed. That leads to Episode Seven, where Diallo gets help from Alena to put Mosai’s remains to rest. And that leads to Episode Eight, where Diallo and Alena are together, but Alena is sent away to be married, and Diallo goes after her.

So, all of Left Behind is a chain of events that cannot be rearranged with simple adjustments. Part One: Wings of Providence, however, is not causally connected in this way. It is arranged chronologically, but beyond the change in the character’s ages and passing references to previous events, there is no absolute necessity for having the episodes arranged in the order they are, aside from Alena’s opening chapter needing to remain first. But with minor adjustments any of the other three may be reshuffled.

This is a plotting and premise problem. Luckily, it is only Wings of Providence that fails to develop causally. And it’s nothing beyond fixing, though it’s going to take some contemplation and careful readjustments. This problem came about because I was content to rely on my intuition for what feels right as a sequence of events, rather than constructing clear causal relationships in the narrative. So, now I have to go back through it and forge after the fact a strong chain of causality that will bind the elements of my story as a cohesive whole.

For years now I’ve been struggling to come up with a satisfying nugget statement, or a brief answer to “what’s your book about?” And now I can see why it’s been so hard to answer that.

The reason I’ve had such a hard time saying what my premise is (what my book is about), is because it’s not about anything. Nothing in particular anyway. My story needs to focus on one or two particular aspects of human nature or life, not all aspects of it. To try to be about everything in one book is to be about nothing. I need to focus on one, or a few related, particulars.

I’ve basically been writing a biography, which is ironic because I distinctly dislike biographies (though I just read two a week ago). Without knowing what your story’s premise is, you end up simply imitating life (biography), which is fundamentally meaningless with all its byways and blind alleys. No matter how interesting those byways and blind alleys are, if they are not connected and necessary to support your premise then they are irrelevant, diluting the strength of the story.

So, what am I going to do about it?

I’m not sure.

Logically, the first thing I need to do is isolate my premise. The closest I’ve come to answering “what’s your book about?” is by saying it’s a coming-of-age story. But that’s more of a theme, or even a genre. Maybe it would make more sense to look at Part Two: Left Behind as my lead for finding my premise, since it’s the only section where the plot is properly developed with a chain of causations.

Over halfway through the book and I’m just now figuring out I’ve been doing it wrong all along. I had already felt something was missing, now I know what. Though the magnitude of it is daunting. But… Nothing is beyond fixing if you’re willing to put in the work.

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Present-Day Reflection

8/23/2026

This is the big structural shift I was waiting for as I reread these journal entries, though the younger me is referring to Episodes for some strange reason. Perhaps because an episodic structure doesn’t require a premise for the whole, just for each individual episode. Whatever. He’ll get rid of that idea soon enough and just start calling the core elements Parts or Chapters.

And yes, I eventually went back to bring everything up to speed so that Wings of Providence as a complete first novel has a clear premise.

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89: The Shadow Falls & Destiny’s Child

6/9/2015

Well, I relocated again, this time to Walla Walla, having ended my relationship in Aberdeen. I moved as far away as possible while still being in the same state. But in the process, and within my renewed solitude, I completed the entire rough draft for Chapter Nine: The Shadow Falls. It only took two weeks, completing 13 new scenes to go with the first scene and The Shadow of Damu fable, which were already done prior to my move. I’m not sure, but I think that was the fastest writing of an entire chapter I’ve done so far. I had to do it all off the cuff without my research notes or outlines, so it will require a lot of additional content on the rewrite, but the heart of it is there.

It felt really good writing like that without much editing, which is how I’ve always heard rough drafts should be done. But it makes for a far less satisfying rereading after. Nevertheless, I’m happy with what got accomplished and the inventions and plot details that were born along the way. I particularly like the scene locations, and specifically the Shadow Falls itself, the jola hut, and the jola fire circle – all of which adds new dimensions to the Batu world I hadn’t previously imagined.

Once I had finished The Shadow Falls, I went on to plot out Chapter 10: Jawara Ben-Bella, and the nine scenes I have planned for that. I hadn’t pen or paper at that point though, so I had to work it all out entirely in my head. I’ll try to recapture the outline and write it down today, now that I’m finally settled in here at my new place in Walla Walla.

I promised myself to have Book One: The Song of Mugasha done by the end of this year, so I have to get at least one chapter done per month. I proved it was possible even while moving, so I have no excuses. I have to get Jawara Ben-Bella started ASAP to make sure it’s done by July.

Chapter’s 11 & 12 are still pretty murky in my mind, though I know I want to introduce love interests for Bakar, Tamal, Dougga and Diallo in Chapter 11, perhaps even a marriage – Dougga and Joyul? I also need to bring in their training as hunters, and how they take on their societal roles as men (the four chapters contained within this part is entitled Childhood’s End, which reflects the over-arcing theme).

Siona will also be explored. I see Chapter 12 taking place around another twa yal-jukun, involving Siona as she experiences a vision with Fa and Ardra, where she sees her own death. Following that, she abandons Kamaria and the Batu tribe to return to The Others. I need to work out and establish the prophecy and the threat to the tribe in much more detail in Chapters 11 and 12, too. This may be done primarily through Siona’s investigations.

I also worked out in my head during my move (yes, it was a busy month of long walks and writing) the key nuances of their backstory so that things fit together. The title of this backstory is Destiny’s Child, and will possibly be a scene in Chapter 16: Revelations down the road.

What I worked out is essentially this:

Alena is no longer Diallo’s half-sister, but rather his cousin. Luala and Siona were sisters. Guma is Diallo’s deceased half-brother. Siona and Luala were daughters of Amra, the ruler of The Others and a descendant of Mugasha. An oracle foresaw the downfall of Amra due to a child with ghost eyes (Alena) that would be known as the Fa Hawara. So, when Alena was born by Siona she feared for her daughter’s life, and with Luala’s help they fled and escaped with the baby.

They are found by the bachwezi and brought into Kamaria and made part of the tribe. Siona seduces Mosai, though he’s more attracted to Luala, and with Siona they beget Guma. But after Guma is devoured by a swarm of ants as an infant, Mosai leaves Siona to marry her sister, Luala. Diallo is born from that union shortly after.

Luala was the favored daughter of Amra, and it was from him that Mogai’s amber amulet was passed down. Alena is the Fa Hawara descending from Mugasha through Amra rather than Mosai. There were two sons of Mugasha, one good (spawning the Batu), and one rebel, Amra (spawning The Others). The Amra in Destiny’s Child and later in the Batu narrative is a descendant of the original Amra. All first born males within the lineage are named Amra upon taking the throne.

As I said, all of this will probably get revealed in Chapter 16: Revelations, except the part of Guma’s death as an infant. That gets left until Book Three when Mogai’s mind begins to shatter as his psychoses begin to reveal themselves.

Anyway, that’s the gist of it. It diminishes the taboo of Diallo and Alena’s relationship as adolescents, but that may be for the best anyway. They’re still first cousins though, which is taboo enough for my plotting purposes. The important thing is that Guma and Diallo are both sons of Mosai and represent a remerging through Guma of the bloodlines of Mugasha’s two sons. Which in the prophecy is an indicator that the end times are at hand. It might be more satisfying if Mosai was really Alena’s father as well, but no plausible explanation lends itself while maintaining Siona as one of The Others fleeing with Alena as a baby.

But none of this needs to be written in stone yet. It is enough to have the gist of it now as I proceed into Chapters 10-12.

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Present-Day Reflection

8/22/2026

Destiny’s Child is still unfinished today, but it has been developed as far as it needs to be to write the main narratives. There’s a lot of loose ends with all my side projects, but right now I’m entirely focused on getting the first book – Wings of Providence – published. The side projects will have to wait until I’m in between books, or until I’m retired from my day job.

There’s just no time at this point for what’s not absolutely necessary.

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88: The Batu Companion

2/14/2015

I just finished the first chapter of The Batu Companion. It opens with a synopsis of The Yara, followed by a commentary section, and finishes with three interviews about The Yara.

All of this came to 21 pages and took two or three weeks. Why I am doing this (especially when I’m only halfway done with the first book) is an embarrassing question. Mainly because it’s easier and more fun than working on the main narrative. I knew I would want a companion eventually, even if only for myself, and I have a good enough grasp of the story as a whole now to at least start the companion.

A companion would help me to crystalize ideas and give me better clarity of what I already have done as I proceed. Also, if I ever need a detailed synopsis of my novel for submission to publishers I will already have it done. It’s there in the introduction to The Batu Companion.

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Present-Day Reflection

8/21/2026

The Batu Companion remains one of my favorite side projects. Adding it to this website, along with more analyses, interviews, and illustrations, really increases the depth and breadth of what I’m trying to do here. I’ve only begun to include the opening chapters from Wings of Providence, and am looking forward to whenever I have time to continue on that.

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87: Things Best Left in the Cellar

9/22/2014

So, I had this thought that it might be interesting to frame my Batu story within a contemporary context with the Batu story told to the reader from that context. It could open with a man in a city (me) who is so repulsed by his own current life situation that he retreats from reality by creating the Batu – a fantasy world as different from his own as he could imagine.

Sound familiar?

Like Canterbury Tales, it would be a story within a story. A story about the writing of a story. But unlike the other books I’ve seen that have done similar things, my book would contain the entire Batu story rather than just fragments, while the fragmented bits would be the occasional return to the contemporary city reality.

The first obvious question is: how does this help or enhance my Batu story? Or does it? More than anything, I’m just jealous of authors writing fiction set within a contemporary setting with all the cultural and linguistic freedoms that come with modernity. To avoid being anachronistic and remain faithful to the Batu’s historical setting I am severely limited in my language usage, style, and awareness of the details of daily life. Every move my characters make has a cascading effect of creation on my part to invent how things work. Nobody can simply pull into a driveway, stumble drunk up the porch steps, fumbling with their keys in the door lock, flip on a light switch before collapsing on the couch. When you build a world from the bottom up there’s no such thing as simple action. So, as much as I love my Batu world, I often envy the comparable easy format of modern times.

And I know the city.

But a contemporary counterpoint story would inevitably rob the Batu story of its mystery, as I answer and explain the themes of the historical tale as an allegory for my life story. Though perhaps the analysis of the Batu mysteries would only deal with the issues I myself am conscious of, thereby pushing the Batu story to generate even deeper questions, the answers to which I couldn’t provide even if I wanted to.

I can have myself walking the streets with a friend, discussing ideas about the Batu story being written. I can have dramatic vignettes from the city narrative that gets absorbed and reflected by the Batu story. I can have the process of writing the tale also be the unraveling of the mystery of what led me to the writing of the series, my real-life drama being reflected in the Batu story. All my angels and demons are in the tale to be interpreted.

The idea, of course, is insane. Something to think about though.

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Present-Day Reflection

8/20/2026

An idea thought about and rejected. It’s an idea that’s not at all original, which turns me off, but it’s also completely self-indulgent. Such narcissistic navel-gazing sickens me. I created the Batu as a way to get out of my head and the world I’m familiar with, not to go rooting around in its cellar.

I suppose elements of biography are inevitable though, scavenging from my own life in desperation for source material. Especially for a first-time writer. I try to avoid it as much as possible, however, and would much prefer it happen subconsciously than as a deliberate creative strategy. The very idea of autobiography grosses me out.

To satisfy the itch, however – the need for immortalizing key facets of my life, and for writing within a modern context with all the ease and freedom that comes with that – I have written a fictional memoir. It’s called Queer Choices, taking place when I’m sixteen years old and back in high school. It’s a self-indulgent exploration of how my life might have been if I were born into a life situation more in keeping with who I really am. I spent years writing it, justifying the time spent by telling myself it’s necessary in order to get the biographical impulse out of my system. Once done, I could return to my real work with a clean head.

In this alternate reality my parents never got divorced, and rather than being the youngest of three, I’m an only child. The background elements are all precisely how I remember them though – the same house I grew up in, same neighborhood, same school, etc. But, as with my parents, all my friends, classmates, and teachers have a vastly different relationship with me because I myself am queerly different. It depicts the version of me I think I’d much rather be – both physically and personally.

It’s a fantasy memoir, but not because I get everything I want. Indeed, after setting the initial conditions to where everything is as I think I’d have wanted, the story unfolds with a life of its own. It quickly becomes apparent how insane and messed up this fictional version of me is, things being much more reckless and dramatic than my life actually was back then. But that’s precisely what makes it so much fun to write. Give myself everything I think I want, only to find out how bad that can be. Albeit, deliciously bad.

356 pages of pure creative fun, exploring the more bizarre corners of my hidden longings. Precisely the kind of thing that’s best kept hidden in the cellar.

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86: An Artist In Need of an Audience

6/17/2014

I moved to Aberdeen, arriving here six weeks ago. Which means, in addition to losing the solitude of my writing studio, I also have a roommate and a TV now. You can imagine how little work is getting done. Though I’ve worked some on The Song of Mugasha fable, completing Part One with Tapu meeting Damu crossing the bridge to the western forest. Not much, but at least it’s something. As predicted, it’s extremely hard to work while in the midst of a new relationship, but I think the TV is an even bigger handicap than the roommate. I love movies, and have been doing a lot of catching up.

I watched the movie Avatar last night for the first time. It was good, but not as naturalistic as I’d have wanted. It was too obviously computer generated, like Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, where cartoons were mixed with live action.

I really liked the culture-building and characterizations of the natives though. The lush forest settings with the massive trees and waterfalls were inspiring for me. The “I see you” is a typical African aboriginal greeting. Their hair and music have blatant African influences, too, while their dress, vocalizations, and uses of “horses” are more in keeping with Native Americans.

The story was okay, though I was disappointed by the use of the exploitive white colonist cliche for the bad guys. It’s telling that the movie only bogged down for me when the scenes were human scenes rather than the native ones. I’d have preferred it if the entire movie was native with no humans and a different nonhuman centered storyline.

On the whole it was good, but aside from the lush visuals it wasn’t the cinematic masterpiece it’s touted as being. It was obviously targeted for mass-market appeal, moving too fast without enough substance to balance the eye-candy, for me to call it great.

As for its comparison to my Batu books: the tribe’s plaited hair, their music, and the lush forest that’s larger than life are the only things I see that they have in common. Thank god.

I got Rob Dogget’s three pages of notes, along with the 150 pages of my manuscript, returned to me two weeks ago. His comments were disappointing though. He admits up front to being prejudiced against my genre of writing (then why’d he want to see it? Didn’t Paul mention it?), and that he won’t be wanting to read more. He even said he had discouraged his students in the past from writing in my genre, and if they must, to at least keep it brief.

What kind of teacher is this? You don’t teach them what, you teach them how. What kind of teacher uses his/her authority to inhibit creative expression by pushing their own genre tastes? Way too many do, no doubt.

Rob was polite about it, but he lost me along with my respect for his opinion in his opening paragraph. All his comments after that were pretty much wasted on me. It didn’t help any that he didn’t even understand that the flashbacks in the prologue were flashbacks, though my two other readers (with no training in literature) both understood the flashback transitions. He wasn’t harsh or overly critical in his comments, however, just obtuse. He even praised my writing in general terms. My only problem with him, and all so-called authorities like him in the arts, is the obvious snobbery and prejudices he has and allowing them to influence his instruction to would-be writers. I experienced enough in art school to know that a good art teacher has no right to push their personal aesthetics in terms of content or genre.

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Present-Day Reflection

8/19/2026

I remember how difficult it was to write that journal entry twelve years ago. It seems like a another lifetime, a LOT of water under the bridge, but the profound resentment I felt from Dogget’s response remains quite clear in my memory. I had to wait two weeks to cool off before journaling about it, and even then it was very difficult because I didn’t want to rant or come off as being defensive or imbittered. I held a lot back, with more emotional restraint than is likely evident.

He didn’t discourage my ambition or creative interests in the slightest, however. He only discouraged my sense of what my readership might look like. Made me wonder if maybe my audience might not be as expansive as I’d hoped. I always thought of my work as being genre-breaking and timeless, and that it would appeal to anybody who likes fiction in general.

Naïve optimism.

To be honest, I’ve never really had a good picture in my head of who my audience is – other than myself. Indeed, even today, I can’t imagine an “ideal reader” as being anything other than a carbon copy of me – someone who loves immersive fantasy, rich cultural mythos, and complex family sagas.

I’ve had my Uncle Paul read hundreds of pages of an earlier draft of Wings of Providence – all the way through to the end of Part Two: Twa Yal-Jukun. I respect him as an avid reader (though having no experience with genre fiction), and as a highly intelligent and insightful thinker. My work fell flat with him as well, and his written notes on what he read that he mailed to me indicated he hadn’t really been able to follow the basic plotting, let alone appreciate any of the finer nuances of symbolism and metaphor.

Paul thought the death of Bakar’s brothers signified the story was becoming a murder mystery. He hadn’t picked up what I thought was obvious – that their father had beaten them to death. Which is why I never bothered mentioning their deaths again in the story, because I saw it as a closed case. Not a mystery.

And I’ve had friends who are avid readers of genre fiction who haven’t enough interest to even try reading my work, let alone appreciating or providing me feedback on it. I’ve only had one friend who has read my work, understood my work, and truly appreciated it. We used to go for long walks in the rain, snow, or scorching heat, talking about Diallo and his struggles. This friend wouldn’t give me a critique though, because he was afraid of influencing me in any way. He always worried that I’d ruin it every time I talked about rewriting things.

But he’s the only one I’ve ever met I could think of as “my audience.”

My deadline for building the print on demand infrastructure for my book launch is the end of this month. Starting in September and leading on up to the October 1st launch, I will be focusing entirely on finding my online audience and trying to reach out to them. Which will be anybody who might actually be reading what I’m writing right now.

So, wish me luck. If history is any guide, I’m going to need it.

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85: Batu Sabbaticals

6/17/2014

I haven’t made an entry in my journal here about my Batu work these last three months because I haven’t done any Batu work here in these last three months. I’ve written a couple pages on The Song of Mugasha fable, but that’s about it. I’ve been on a Batu Sabbatical painting murals for teddy bears five days a week. Combining that with the convenient timing of finishing Part Two: Left Behind, as well as realizing I have a huge two-chapter gap in Part Three’s scene outline with no current plotting ideas to fill it. I’ve not even found the energy to tackle it on my off hours or weekends.

I’ve been Batu-lazy.

But tonight I got a letter from Uncle Paul saying that his retired English teacher friend from Lakeside, Rob Dogett, offered to read what I’ve got done with my Batu so far. He’s the one who critiqued my application essay for the Northwest College of Art in 2003. I was ecstatic about this offer, so I packaged up my prologue and first three chapters and mailed it to Paul for Rob. That’s only 162 pages of 556 I got done, but it’s a good sampling for Rob, letting him know where my strengths and weaknesses are. If he wants more, I’ll send more. I’m not sure what kind of feedback he may give, but I’m open and anxious to hear anything from an unbiased professional. This will be my first quasi-professional reading.

I’m excited. Maybe it will motivate me to start writing the second half now.

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Present-Day Reflection

8/18/2026

I painted a large mural for a project I was working with that made teddy bears for children in the midst of crisis situations. The teddy bears we made were donated to local law enforcement who kept them in the trunks of their patrol cars. They’d be handed out to comfort children during domestic violence calls or other emergency situations, and the mural I painted was a long parade of all the teddy bears and other stuffed animals we made, marching through a mountain valley.

That mural led to a few other mural jobs promoting other programs, keeping me busy with painting instead of writing. I probably needed the break from my Batu work. I get that same feeling a lot in my present-day life situation as well. Managing burn-out when I can’t afford to take a sabbatical. I got my book launch deadline set of October 1st, and I intend to keep it. I allow myself micro-sabbaticals in the form of taking an evening off to just read or go to bed early. Or to give a couple hours to doing housework, catching up on general life maintenance things that have been slipping through the cracks. But I never really take a whole day off from doing any Batu related work at all.

There just isn’t enough hours in a day, and I need to get things done for my launch.

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84: Remembering What’s Yet to Come

3/29/2014

Well, I didn’t put the first half to bed after all. I edited and rewrote the first and second scenes of the first chapter. Also rewrote the Wings of Providence fable, transferred the entire edited prologue from my media tablet to paper, edited and rewrote Dougga’s scene in The Kulu, and edited Badru’s scene in The Wounded. In other words, I fixed all my most problematic scenes. Hopefully I can move forward now without looking back.

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Present-Day Reflection

8/17/2026

Rereading my old journals is sometimes like watching a movie I’ve seen before – anticipating, though not quite sure how soon, certain things I know are going to happen. It allows me to appreciate what a blessing it is that memory only works in one direction. Because I suspect it would make doing my work infinitely more difficult if I could remember what lies ahead of me as clearly as I remember what lies behind.

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83: A Prison of Fours

3/8/2014

I wrote the new scene for Chapter Three: The Fever today. The three boys are spear fighting  with hot embers in the darkness beneath the village. It’s kind of fun, and expanded a tad on the allusions of how Diallo got The Fever. It turned out okay, but more than anything I’m just glad I can finally put the first half of Book One to bed. Shouldn’t have to touch it for another eleven years now.

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Present-Day Reflection

8/16/2026

If only saying it made it so. That 42 year old version of myself had only scratched the surface of his rewrites and reimagining, and had yet to even make the transition away from referring to his chapters as scenes. The thing that kept me entrenched in that old model so long was my clinging to a symmetry of fours. I wanted four volumes in the series, four Books per volume, four Parts per book and four chapters per Part. Four levels of Four.

Four is the only sacred number among Batu, and it’s used as the metronome for the entire series – providing a sense of rhythm and harmony to everything. There was a time when I kept track of all my uses of four, but after compiling a list several pages long I eventually lost track and stopped documenting its use. That was about 15 years ago. Suffice it to say that the number four is used almost every time there’s a number put to anything.

A brief sampling of the more obvious uses would be:

·       The four villages that comprise the tribe as a whole.

·       The series centering around four best friends (Diallo, Tamal, Bakar, Dougga).

·       Four members of the jola representing the four spiritual disciplines of the tribe.

·       The four songs comprising The Napatawalata song cycle.

·       The four segments of The Yara prelude to Wings of Providence.

·       The word Batu has four letters in it.

·       There’s four gateways in and out of Ephrathah.

·       There’s four emergent trees with their own fire circles in Ephrathah.

·       Mosai’s kulu has four holes in it.

·       In the Kanar Exegesis there are four glyphs in each set and every glyph has four levels of meaning.

·       The Twa Yal-Jukun takes place every four years.

·       Each book in the series spans four years.

·       There’s four rites of passage in a person’s lifetime that occurs every four years (if they live long enough).

·       Every ritual has 4 stages to it…

As I said, the list goes on and on. And it was this obsession with the number four that kept me fixed to the idea that every book in the series could only have four chapters. Letting go of that took a lot of convincing. The strongest argument was the realization of how ridiculous it is to have 50+ page chapters. Ultimately though, it was my need for creative freedom that broke the chain of fours.

I build my own prisons, and only I can forge the keys that set me free.

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82: The Point of Pointless Play

3/7/2014

Finished my last new scene for Chapter One yesterday, where Alena and Joyul get hit by a swarm of butterflies at the river. I like this scene for the imagery and grandeur, but I’m not sure how it will play with the book as a whole and its plotline. It’s dangerously close to being pointless, beyond its sensationalistic appeal. And it ties in with the Wings of Providence theme, of course, with the butterfly motif and Joyul’s insistence that it must be a sign. But its purpose is still kind of flimsy. No characters get developed, nor does the story. And the action within this chapter has no effect or illumination on later events.

The other two new scenes with the boys, on the other hand, developed them in ways that will influence future actions – so they had a point. Oddly enough though, I think I like this butterfly swarm scene the best. Despite its pointless existence, it’s fun.

Now I have one more scene to write in Chapter Three: The Fever. I’m playing with ideas of Tamal and his bow and arrow, maybe bringing in Makoa as his adopted father. Maybe having the boys engaged in hunting each other in the dark with spears that have hot coals attached to their ends – a sort of ancient paintball battle where pains (or burns) are part of the fun while learning hunting skills.

Not sure. Still playing with ideas.

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Present-Day Reflection

8/15/2026

Focus on the rhythm of the song and clear the clutter of your complicated mind. Meanings don’t matter when they’re idle chatter of a transcendental kind. When they’re able to take any shape one likes, all that matters is the music.

–The Way of the Mystic, excerpt

This epigram used as the header for Chapter 9: Wings of Light is probably the best retort I can come up with to the original journal entry I wrote 13 years ago. All my doubts and concerns about the chapter may have been valid from the point of view of an editorial critique, but they’re completely beside the point of why such a chapter is necessary – because it’s fun

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81: New Perspectives

3/4/2014

Just finished Bakar and Dougga’s Guardian of the Gate scene to plug into Chapter one. And I wrote Tamal a scene yesterday, with him up in the tree atop Overlook Hill after hearing about his mother’s death. That one turned out better, of course, because it was so much shorter. Short and sweet is much easier to make poignant and consistently good from beginning to end. That rule of thumb doesn’t bode well for my first novel as a whole, considering what a mammoth it’s turning into.

Anyway, it was an odd experience to go back and revisit Chapter One like this in order to flesh it out. It’s very much like traveling back in time, only instead of reliving what I already lived, I’m going back to see adjacent stories and circumstances related to my original experience. New perspectives on what was thought to be an already fully realized experience.

None of what I’ve written in these two new scenes are necessary to the plot in any fundamental way. How could they when I built what I have already without them? Yet I believe they do enhance the quilt I’m attempting to weave. Both Tamal and Dougga are better understood now. The theme of Making Friends is better illustrated now for this chapter as well. It anchors the characters with deeper roots, rather than just popping up out of thin air in the Twa Yal-Jukun chapter after 200 pages of story without them.

I’ve got one more scene to write for this first chapter, then that ought to do it for Alena. I’m considering adding a scene into The Fever as well for Tamal, Bakar, and Dougga. They don’t need a lot of presence there, but if Diallo is their friend during this period, they should have a scene in the chapter where he’s on death’s door the whole time.

It will probably have more vague references to Alena sending Diallo on a quest for the ghost frog, which is how he contracted The Fever from mosquitoes in the swamp. Just a two-to-three-page dialogue would do.

Something to think about. First, I have to do this last scene for Chapter One tomorrow. Short and sweet, so it should be good… though I haven’t given it any thought and have no idea what it will be about. It needs to tie into Alena though, since the chapter is named after her and she’s only appeared briefly in it so far.

I’m happy. Things are going well. Better than expected in fact.

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Present-Day Reflection

8/14/2026

Finally, the younger me is getting back to the beginning to flesh things out and bringing things up to where they stand today. More or less. He’s still at the very beginning of his reimagining work and has no clue what he’s really undertaking, but it’s a start.

New perspectives are vital for breathing in new life, adding depth with unforeseen dimensions. This is what reality does, so it’s only appropriate that art should do it as well. Experimenting and growing in new and unexpected directions.

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80: From Dissolutions to New Beginnings

3/1/2014

Just reread all of Dissolutions again. And again, I was disappointed with the overall quality of my writing. It’s going to need a lot more rewriting on the computer someday. It’s clumsy and soulless, with only a few shining moments. The story itself is okay, even good in some parts, but the telling of it sucks! And it gets worse as the chapter progresses. You can tell I didn’t enjoy writing it too much. Oh well, I’ll fix it later. Much later.

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Present-Day Reflection

8/13/2026

Today is not someday. Nothing is getting done today. Or, I should say, nothing is getting finished today. I’ve been working all weekend (my weekend being Wednesday and Thursday) on getting my Kindle account registered and my eBook uploaded and ready to go with all the infrastructure and tech b.s. that goes along with that. As well as my IngramSpark print-on-demand infrastructure setup for my paperback and hardcover versions. Kindel Direct Publishing was an all day affair yesterday, and all of today was spent with IngramSpark.

Though getting my book formatted properly for the print version is going to take a while yet. The templates IngramSpark supply totally suck and would warp the entire feel of my work with their formatting constraints.

Though I have the Author’s Edition of the eBook available right now for the world from my website, not many are aware it’s even there. And nobody that cares. The official launch date for my Kindle page and their EPUB will be October 1st. Same with my paperback and hardcover versions from IngramSpark. That gives me all the time I should need to get the last minute edits and glitches cleaned up, as well as formatting it to perfection.

Unlike my feelings about Dissolutions 13 years ago, I’m feeling really good about Wings of Providence and how it’s being packaged for its birthday. And I’m not going to deal with its fine-tuning later; I’m getting it done for the last time by September 27th – which is the deadline for when my two host sites need the final version of my manuscript uploaded.

Wish me luck. I won’t need it.

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79: Someday Is Today

2/26/2014

I did it. I finally did it. I got my new Kanar breakdowns completed – all 40 of them. I only need to find two icon designs, a mimosa plant and a jade crystal. But once those images are found it will take less than 15 minutes for them both of them together. Easy. Though I consider it now finished and won’t attempt any updates on it until I have a computer.

This Kanar breakdown project began right after I made my Kanar mandala, almost three years ago in the middle of 2011. Three years for only 40 pages, and I just did the last twelve glyphs in three days. One set of four per day is pretty good work. But it’s been one of those pain-in-the-ass projects I was beginning to think would never get done.

Well, now it’s done.

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Present-Day Reflection

8/12/2026

Someday isn’t synonymous with never for me. I’m careful to avoid using the two words interchangeably and will only use someday for those things I really want to do and feel it’s likely I will. The things I only vaguely wish about or put off because they’re too low on my priority list to consider seriously, I don’t lie to myself about my intentions.

If I really care, it gets done. And I try to be honest about it to avoid feeling bad about what falls through the cracks. There isn’t anything Batu related that I don’t care enough about to say someday for. Providing I live long enough, it will all get done.

My list of somedays for Batu material is fairly extensive, but here are a couple of the highlights I’m most looking forward to:

Doing a series of large-scale oil paintings depicting my favorite scenes from the entire series of the Batu Saga. Perhaps to be used to publish calendars, book covers, or insert illustrations, etc.

Going to central Africa to live and breathe the geography, flora, and fauna I’ve been trying to evoke in my work. As well as interacting with some of the modern-day traditional cultures that might most closely resemble what I’ve been writing about. The Maasai, the Hadza, or perhaps even the Khoisan ethnic groups of the Kalahari in Southern Africa.

Things like that.

Though, of course, I have my more immediate list of things to do as well – mostly dealing with the launching of this website as a platform for my books. Like setting up distribution accounts for print-on-demand with Amazon KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) and IngramSpark.

For those two things, someday is today.

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78: Patience & Compassion

2/23/2014

Just finished the Making Friends fable today. Also wrote The Herald of Jukun three days ago, and The Gourd of Wisdom the day before that. I mailed them all out with my Dissolutions work to Uncle Paul tonight. I’m glad it’s all done and in the vault now.

Only, not quite yet.

The Making Friends fable for Chapter One: Alena turned out so well that it inspired me to go back and add more scenes to Chapter One. More scenes with Bakar, Tamal, Dougga, and maybe Alena. I’d like to show some antagonism between Diallo and the three boys to show how he didn’t have any real friends at that age. Guma’s appearance in Diallo’s life is meant to fill a void, which is reflected well in the Making Friends fable.

I came close to combining Chapter One: Alena with Chapter Two: Kumbella, and writing a whole new second chapter with Diallo chasing Alena, which would detail the whole Ghost Frog quest that results in him coming down with The Fever. All the things that I alluded to in Chapter Three: The Fever but left as a mystery. I seriously considered doing this because the first chapter is so weak it doesn’t really stand on its own the way the other chapters do.

But I decided not to because it would weaken the mystery of The Fever and would be an unwelcome burden for Kumbella to carry Alena when Kumbella does just fine on its own. Plus, coming up with a whole new chapter at this point would break my spirits, seeing how I believed I was almost done with the first half of the book.

Well, I’m still almost done. I just have to figure out what to do for the rest of Chapter One: Alena. And it has to be good in order to pick up the slack from the first half of the chapter.

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Present-Day Reflection

8/11/2026

It’s odd to find myself now growing impatient with my younger self. Rereading these journal entries where I’m still so far behind where I am now – structurally speaking – and refusing to make the necessary shifts in direction to get to where I should be. In this entry I finally sense what needs to be done, but I don’t have the will power to commit to it. But then compassion kicks in, and my impatience dissolves as I forgive the younger version of me. He’s doing the best he can and will find his way in his own time.

Patience and Compassion are two muscles I find myself needing to exercise more and more in my life these days. Not just for me and my Batu work, but for strangers on the street and for the other people I’ve chosen to share my life with. Nobody lives up to my standards. Not me, not anybody. Especially, not anybody.

Watching people defecate in the street with no shame – the homeless who seem to have given up on life that I interact with every day as part of my day job. And even my friends and coworkers who don’t seem to care about anything or anybody but themselves. It’s all so demoralizing and frustrating. I lose my patience, get angry, and start becoming judgmental, wondering why it seems like I’m the only one who’s trying anymore.

Then it occurs to me that others may be wondering the same about me. That what I’m seeing when I look out onto the world is the end result of something beyond the people I’m judging. That they too may be doing the best they can, dealing with issues I have no inkling of. Things way worse than anything I’ve ever had to face. Just the possibility that this might be true is enough to give me pause and restore some of my patience and compassion. Not everybody is strong enough to carry the burdens of their life choices, let alone the things they didn’t choose that are forced upon them. I haven’t always been strong enough either. And I too have been judged for my weakness. Which has only made it easier for me to judge.

The problem isn’t in recognizing weakness and fault, it’s in blaming and becoming resentful because of it. The problem is the il will and anger that comes from it. Whether it’s directed at others or at myself. I work hard. I try hard to do well. I care, and I sacrifice a lot in order to get what truly matters to me. And all of this effort I put into living comes at the cost of feeling entitled to judge those who appear not to be trying at all. Especially after I’ve been judged harshly so many times.

This is when it matters most for me to overcome my emotional impulses – when I feel I have all the justifications in the world to judge and feel negatively about the way things are. If I can’t rise above the easy choice of giving up and letting my emotions dictate my perspectives, then how can I expect anyone else to?

Expectations have always been my emotional downfall.

So, looking back at the younger version of myself in this journal entry from 2014, I choose to exercise some compassion and patience for what he may be going through – whatever it is that may be blocking him from doing what needs to be done. Because, in truth, it was long enough ago that I no longer remember what all the burdens were that he was carrying. And it’s the awareness that I don’t really know what it is that I’m judging that allows me to stop doing it.

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77: Scaling for Time & Energy

2/18/2014

Just got done transcribing Dissolutions. 32,752 words, and 107 pages over a six-day period. My reward is the carpal tunnel that’s growing nicely at the same rate as my book. I’m just glad it’s done. Three more fables and the first half will be complete.

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Present-Day Reflection

8/10/2026

I never have had a good sense of how things really stand with my own work in terms of scale and structure. What I thought of 13 years ago as half of one book is now two complete books. Though I had yet to go back and rewrite them both, where what was then only Part One was to expand by hundreds of pages as I fleshed it all out. Especially the Ghost Frog chapters, which were still left as entirely unwritten backstory at that point.

Even today, though I keep referring to the Batu Saga as a four-book epic, I actually have a detailed scene outline for 16 books. I’ve yet to decide how much of that I want to include in the remaining two books of my 4-book plan, however. The 16-book outline was condensed and reimagined when I transformed what I was calling scenes into chapters, and I realized how long it was taking to write these books.

Though I don’t mind working on the series for the remainder of my life, and I’m in no particular hurry to finish them (getting it done right always taking priority over speed), at my current rate of production the estimated remainder of my life wouldn’t be enough to get 14 more books done. Not while my economic status keeps me working a day job that consumes more than half my waking hours and 90% of my energy. That’s time and energy spent on paying the bills instead of on what matters most to me – my writing.

Four books are much more realistic within the timeframe of the rest of my life. However, if my first book takes off after I begin to market it, and my economic status allows me to retire and become a full-time writer again – as I was 13 years ago – who knows what I might be able to accomplish?

As it is though, my four-book forecast is based entirely on the life situation and schedule I have to work with right now.

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76: The Author’s Edition

2/17/2014

I’m working hard now on getting my edited roughs of Dissolutions transcribed into a legible format. My Author’s Edition. Writing longhand like this, I only average 17 words per minute (yes, I timed it), and it’s taking a toll on my poor writing hand. Carpal tunnel syndrome is coming along just fine though.

I got 24,000 words transcribed since I started which is about six hours straight a day for four days. Of course, it really took a lot longer with formatting the headers and margins on each page and pausing to work the kinks out of the wrist of my writing hand. Plus, I do a word count of each scene as I finish them, taking 20-30 minutes each.

I also took a couple days to transcribe four fables into my Author’s Edition before starting on Dissolutions. When I’m done transcribing chapter eight, I still have to create and transcribe three more fables for chapters one, two, and four before I can truly say the first half of my book is done.

When I went back through scene ten, where Diallo approaches L’Norien, I became frustratingly aware that I don’t know what I’m talking about. I’ve got a good deal of flora and fauna details, but they are all encyclopedic. Dry and inert. I don’t believe the narrator (me) has really been there and knows what these birds, plants, and terrain are really like. I need to infuse them with evocative details that could only be known by someone who has been there.

That’s what these world building scenes need – things nobody could accurately imagine or make up without first-hand experience. Otherwise, it’s just a travel brochure. I got the names of things, their colors, etc., but not their essence. I want LIFE, not shadow imitations. Which means… Lots of work to do.

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Present-Day Reflection

8/9/2026

My Author’s Edition, in the version as it stood back then, was merely my official first draft. Today, my Author’s Edition is the version that I like best, distinct from what editors and A.I. suggest the books should be.

I haven’t had any trouble with carpal tunnel in a long time. Probably not since 2024, the last time I had long bouts of writing longhand. I call it Carpal tunnel, but that’s not really what it was. It was more likely just me straining the tendons in my wrist. I never experienced numbness or tingling, only soreness pains. And my thumb and fingers were never effected by it, just my wrist.

Carpal tunnel sounds better though than mere straining. It’s something I never came close to ever experiencing from typing. I can type all day long with no problem.

Life is better these days, there can be no doubt. Still lots of work to do though.

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75: Writing From the Heart

2/11/2014

Well, I did it. Chapter Eight: Dissolutions is finally done. All 83 pages worth. The last scene was much easier and better than the one before it, just as I thought it would be. Only three pages but written ten times better. It seems that I do best when there aren’t a lot of preconceived elements to orchestrate, and when I can go slow and play with the mood/tone and the language. I really like how this ended. The details and the wording worked out much better than I’d planned. The knife was a last-minute idea – the notion that this story could have gone in a darker direction with murder. But that’s not the story I mean to tell. Not yet anyway. We will meet Kinjul again in Part Four where his fate unravels, but not now.

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Present-Day Reflection

8/8/2026

I envy literary writers who can get away with writing purely from the heart, seemingly winging it without the burdens of plot or storytelling. Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient comes to mind. Not because it has no plot or because it doesn’t tell a story, because it most definitely does. All the novels I love do. It’s more because I can never really recall what the plot or story is, except vaguely, even though I keep reading the book over and over again. I read it over and over again because of Ondaatje’s use of language. It’s probably the most beautifully written book I’ve ever read.

She unskins the plum with her teeth, withdraws the stone and passes the flesh of the fruit into his mouth.

He whispers again, dragging the listening heart of the young nurse beside him to wherever his mind is, into that well of memory he kept plunging into during those months before he died.

The story and plot are pointless to me though. It’s the poetry and sensory evocation of time and place. Quiet intimacies, and subtle nuances of awareness for how things are when someone is truly paying attention to life. Ian McEwan is another one, who described it in Atonement as that vital knowingness about the ways of the world which compels a reader’s respect.

…a squirrel’s skull as light as a leaf – shows a nicety of awareness. As does the follow up – But hidden drawers, lockable diaries and cryptographic systems could not conceal from Briony the simple truth: she had no secrets… Nothing in her life was sufficiently interesting or shameful to merit hiding; no one knew about the squirrel’s skull beneath her bed, but no one wanted to know.

McEwan isn’t the poet that Ondaatje is, but for me he is by far the better writer because he’s the perfect blend of diction and story. McEwan’s plots and stories are very memorable because they’re not there just to show off his pros, his pros is there in the service of the story. And for me, story has to come first.

Frank Herbert’s Dune and Richard Adams’ Watership Down are books I try to emulate because of the blend of diction and story. And though their use of language never rises to the level of McEwan’s, I like their stories better than his. For me, the perfect book would blend the imagination and world building of Herbert and Adams with Ondaatje’s poetry and McEwan’s vital knowingness about the ways of the world that compels respect.

This is my goal in writing the Batu Saga, even though it’s an ideal I know I’ll never achieve. I brush up against it every now and then in the scenes like I just mentioned in the entry from 2/11/2014, and once in The Wounded, as well as a few other places. But I’m afraid my writing from the heart has, more times than not, taken a back seat to plot and storytelling. And the Ondaatje-type poetry is virtually non-existent.

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74: Time Enough for Love

2/10/2014

Well, the twelfth scene is finished now, and I’m disappointed with it. It’s Diallo’s wedding challenge with Kinjul, 13 ½ pages that took me five days of writing all day long. Yet when I went back to reread it all in one sitting the pacing was way off – the drama was static, and even the dialogue was blah. It felt really good as I wrote it, and I was proud of several inventions and surprising twists. Yet they all fell flat on the reread. What I’ve got on paper is but a vague shadow of what was playing out in my mind and heart as I wrote it. I even brought myself to tears as I wrote the climax. Yet, on the reread… nothing.

I’m hoping that this is an illusion, created by the contrast of having just spent days living and breathing every nuance hour after hour, from the time I woke until I had to go to sleep again – then having it read in its entirety in about twenty minutes. The contrast between the length of creation and the length of reading may be offsetting my perspective.

The irony here, however, is that I wanted this scene to be only seven or eight pages because of the already excessive size of Dissolutions. And though it ended up being almost twice as long as I planned, it still feels like it went too fast.

My next, and last scene for Dissolutions, will be a brief one that I believe will turn out much better. I’d like to get it done today as a birthday present for myself. Finishing this chapter will make me officially halfway through the first book. That feels nice.

But it’s still frustrating. Why can’t I capture in words what’s in my head?

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Present-Day Reflection

8/7/2026

Because there’s more in my head than just pictures and words. There’s a whole world of sensory detail, emotions, and context that can never be fully translated. Add to that, the fact that every reader brings to it their own unique world of psychological and emotional context to the scant sensory detail I provide – it’s a fool’s errand to try and control how it will translate for a reader.

Even when the reader is me, because my context changes in subtle ways from moment to moment. The greater the distance in time from the moment of creation, the greater the gap in context. Which is why I need time in order to properly evaluate what I’ve done. Time enough to create, time enough to judge what I’ve created, and time enough to fix it.

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