So it’s been a while since I’ve written an update and I have a LOT to share. 

Major news first: I FINISHED THE KINGSLEY REWRITE!!!!

It took me a little longer than I wanted because I severely underestimated how much changing Alex’s arc would affect the rest of the book, but I’m really excited about this version. It’s currently with beta readers and then it needs to go to my editor for another review, but I think I’m really close to its final form. 

Kingsley is an adult, fantasy noir story. It’s about:

Only defeated rebels get tried for war crimes. That’s why Kingsley, a queer anthropomorphic crocodile, is facing the empire’s noose. To save his life, he’ll have to shed many crocodile tears and manipulate Alex, a traumatized journalist whose wife Kingsley tortured. What? He’s done worse

It’s currently 131K which isn’t bad, although I’d like to get closer to 120k if I can, but we’ll see. The reason this word count is so low is because I cut all the footnotes and appendices. If my beta readers say they’re needed, then I’m looking at 150K words again. 

Rewriting Alex’s Arc

One of the biggest takeaways from my editor’s original notes was that Alex’s arc wasn’t quite working within the context of the entire story, so I had to go back to the drawing board and figure out why I wanted Alex in the story in the first place. 

The story is split into two different narratives. The first narrative is Kingsley’s memoir. The second narrative is Alex trying to dismantle Kingsley’s memoir. So the book is actually at war with itself and the reader has to decide if/when they trust Kingsley’s tale and if/when they trust Alex’s version. 

I was worried that Alex’s story would overtake Kingsley’s or make things too complicated, so I tried to introduce Alex’s arc in a limited and subtle way. However, that made Alex’s story seem unimportant and, so, during this rewrite, I decided to commit fully to Alex’s narrative. Now Alex and Kingsley occupy the same amount of real estate and we dive deeper into Alex’s motives, demons, and world. 

While developing Alex’s arc, I made few changes to Kingsley’s narrative, but the context for each of his chapters have now changed. I’m really curious to see what my beta readers have to say about Kingsley and his story now that Alex is taking an active role in dismantling almost everything Kingsley says (in the original drafts it was far more subtle and limited dismantling). 

Getting to know Alex

Alex, who is a hetero-romantic, ace, and agender, is one of my oldest OCs. They started as my imaginary friend when I was nine and turned into a MC when I started writing my own stories. They’ve been with me for most of my life and so it wasn’t hard to jump into their head and the scenes that were just about them or about them and their wife, Christine, were the easiest scenes to rewrite. 

Alex is a practical person who believes everything can be rooted in some sort of logic or system. They are a person of science and reason and they need rules to live their life. They have a lot of assumptions about the world, people, and themselves and have a hard time functioning if these assumptions are challenged or debunked. The Alex in this book is an older Alex, who was a war correspondent during the Second Shadow War and the Alex I know best is the young Alex who doesn’t know about the Second Shadow War, so I had a fun time trying to understand how a world war that shatters the then existing international system would affect someone like Alex. 

The short answer: they’re a fucking mess and, surprise, surprise, interviewing the being who tortured their wife isn’t helping their mental state at all. 

The rewrite helped me dive deep into their mental state and instead of being this outside figure who can provide the reader the “truth” about Kingsley’s story, Alex becomes a figure desperate to function when all they really want to do is die and this quest to unmask Kingsley is either a noble cause or literally the only thing keeping them together and they’re terrified of what happens when it’s over. Which, of course, makes them just one more person who benefits from Kingsley and his cause. 

When is Too Much Really Too Much?

Of course, the risk of developing one character’s arc, especially when it’s only tangentially connected to Kingsley’s arc, is that you’re doing too much in one book. I’ll admit that is probably the case with this book, but I’ve made my peace with that. As long as it’s engaging and entertaining, what does the rest matter, haha?

That being said, the one way I tried to keep Alex’s story connected to Kingsley was utilizing characters who had already been mentioned in Kingsley’s memoir. Alex has their own family and they are completely new characters, but Alex also spends time with Kingsley’s fellow rebels like Devin Tossier, Margaret Leland, and Caroline Galloway. These scenes were the hardest to write because I don’t know those three characters as well as I know Alex and I had to figure out what decades of revolution and a world war would do to them and what their feelings towards Kingsley would be and also how did Alex perceive those feelings and goals since their arc is mostly told through their POV. 

Those scenes took the longest to write but they were also a lot of fun because I got to write certain characters closer to who they really are vs how Kingsley wants you to think of them and it allowed me to expand the world while staying within the confines of Kingsley’s rebellion. And it’s always fun to write a Kingsley chapter where x happens and then write an interview with Devin who can say what? X never happened. It was actually Y. or yeah x happened but so did y so really it’s XY that happened. 

I hope readers are going to enjoy reading this book and figuring out oh so this quirk that Kingsley said Devin had, he was right or wow Kingsley really butchered Devin’s character, didn’t he? 

Corruption!

The one section that Alex’s POV didn’t help clarify at all is the Demon War, haha. The Demon War is the main climax and is the most difficult event to write about because it literally determines the plot for every other book. It’s a massive continental war that affects every major nation and sets the stage for the Second Shadow War, so it’s a super important event to introduce, but since it’s so big I literally have to break up the major developments into different books. It’s like a medallion broken into several different pieces. On their own the pieces may be beautiful and have a design that could stand on its own, but you won’t see the full picture until all the pieces come together and then open the door that unleashes the ancient evil (in this case that would be the Second Shadow War).

It’s also why the Demon book is now a three book series within my first trilogy, haha. 

This book is only interested in how Kingsley wants to present the Demon War, except with Alex’s expanded arc, they can unravel that narrative, complicating an already complicated mess. So, I am worried I muddled the climax of the book, however, I was pleased that I could use Alex’s research to beef up the corruption subplot. 

No surprise considering I love noir and cold war thrillers/political dramas, I love a corruption subplot especially when it’s a governmental or military entity. The corruption of the Hevian (human) colonial democracy and the Gargainian (also human) theocracy is the string that is supposed to connect Kingsley’s memoir, the Demon book(s) and the giant scorpion book into one trilogy, but I’ve struggled trying to introduce that aspect in the Kingsley book. Alex’s expanded arc allowed me to pull up documents that Kingsley would never have access to that reveal how rotten the Hevian and Gargainian government and society truly is. I hope it’s another moment when the reader can compare what Kingsley wrote and compare what Alex discovered and realize things are rarely as simple or straightforward as they seem. Or my beta readers will report back that it’s just really confusing and I need to rethink some things haha.

Future Plans

Depending on my beta reader’s and editor’s feedback, I probably have one to two more rewrites before this book is ready for publication. Hopefully they won’t be massive rewrites like the latest one, but we’ll see. Either way, I’m confident I can have this book published no later than fall of next year, which is very exciting but also very overwhelming. 

I’ve been thinking a lot about publishing and I don’t think traditional publishing is for me, not even with an indie press. It’s funny but thinking of my book as a product that has to be sold makes me absolutely miserable and kills my love for the story and writing in general. I still want to share my work with the world, but I want to do it my own way which means self-publishing is my only option.

But what do I mean by self-publishing? I want to give this book the best chance it can have and I’m doubtful anyone will find it if I just throw it on Amazon (and I have feelings about Amazon and their monopoly on self-publishing). I asked myself what does success look like for me? Is it money because if so this is the wrong book to try and make money off of. Is it views? If that’s the case I’m just going to be frustrated because social media algorithms are the worst, twitter is dying, and I’ve never been good at getting attention of any kind. Also, I lowkey hate attention and the hustle culture. So success became: what would be the most enjoyable way to share this story with the world? 

I thought about media I enjoy and for some reason my mind went to music and how the two subcultures I love are goth and punk and so I said to myself, “Why don’t I just garage band this thing?”

At the time, the term “garage band” had a very profound meaning to me. It was like a lightbulb went off in my head and everything made sense. 

That clarity lasted for an hour and now, I don’t really know what it means beyond doing things my own way and potentially not even publishing on Amazon. It means releasing this book in as many different formats as I can. It means it may exist as a podcast and as a series of blog posts. It means I may not publish it in actual book form until I’m confident I can run a successful kickstarter that will provide the funds I need to publish it the way I want. 

I love the work and formatting Reimena put into their series the Carpet Merchant of Konstantiniyya and I want to do something similar. I’m already creating multimedia pieces for the book, why shouldn’t I format the rest of the book in a unique manner? I also want to be able to offer posters, t-shirts, pins, stickers, pamphlets, etc. with my book. 

I already have ten short stories outlined that I can publish separately and then pull together as a companion piece (with a new, never read short story or two) and I have two potential companion novellas planned out as well. And I love the idea of creating an interactive website for a fake museum to host a fake exhibit on Kingsley’s fake memoir where all the world building info that formerly existed as footnotes and back matter can exist as full articles because it’s fun. I’m trying to figure out how I can incorporate puppets as well…

A part of me is why do all of that if I’m not confident I’ll get the views let alone create a following who would contribute to a kickstarter, but another part of me gets so excited at the prospect of doing it this way. I think it’s because it allows me to sit with the world and take my time. Whatever I can’t cover in Kingsley itself I can cover on the website and I can do fun things with the audio for each podcast episode that just adds to the world building.

So I don’t know. We’ll see. Maybe after the twentieth rewrite I’ll just be so tired, I’ll say fuck it and just throw it on Amazon and call it a day.