Jonathan Lovelace's Blog, page 5

Writing status update (#37)

It’s been four weeks since my last report on my progress developing the Shine Cycle, my fantasy series-in-preparation, and as the past month has gone quite well, I’d better give an update now—as I’ll explain.

While I’m no longer trying to keep the departments-on-days schedule that put all Shine Cycle-related material on Mondays, my ideal is still a post a week, and on Monday if I have it by then. The reason I say “I’d better give an update now” is that in the last couple of months or so several of the tasks at the top of my task tracker were those for creating précis, or for writing the last piece missing for a character profile, each of which I like to post once a month if I have them … so posts are already scheduled for the next two Mondays, and for the second Monday in the following two months.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Despite classwork, letters I owed friends and relatives, Holy Week and Easter observance (to the extent they are observed in the liturgically-impoverished circles in which I primarily move of late), and lingering symptoms as I have gradually recovered from the illness I mentioned a month ago, I managed quite a bit of Shine Cycle development each week. (With encouragement, informal accountability, and some help, from the more-advanced-author friend writing as Aubrey Hansen … thank you, Aubrey!)

Let’s see whether it matched up to my goals for the period, however:

Resume and continue regular work on Shine Cycle development (the prerequisite for any substantial progress at all).

Not as regular or frequent as I would like, but I couldn’t have managed half-a-dozen or more items each week for the past month without what I would call minimal regularity, so I’ll count this a success.

Write at least least two character biographies.

As of Saturday, when I wrote and scheduled this report, four; I may have written another since then.

Write at least one character history.

Done. And another hasn’t come up in the task tracker yet.

Do “snowflake step 2” for at least three planned novels.

Five. Fortunately, these overlapped significantly with the précis I was supposed to be writing and posting (or, after the first, scheduling for later months).

Post at least two Shine Cycle-related post before the next status update.

Done: a précis of The Covenant, and a character profile of Queen Primrose. If my “worldbuilding” tasks had been actual worldbuilding instead of “snowflake” fractal outlining, I might even have had a third. And, as I mentioned, there are several posts for future months already scheduled.

Create super-sequence outlines for at least two of the “Alternate Universes” sub-series.

Done … and, in fact, this particular group of tasks is finished, at least until the “in such-and-such-Alternate-Universes-story, outline such-and-such by sequence” tasks come up (in a few years). Unless I have an idea for an alternate history (or public-domain setting, like Pellucidar—not that I’m likely to use that one …) that I feel I have to include.

Make a good start on outlining The Counter by sequence.

Done: I got through the first two “super-sequence” or “pre-sequence” segments. I also rescheduled the next one in the task tracker to just before the following one, so I can do more than one at a time.

Write at least a hundred words of “actual prose.”

This is the one goal that I (again) absolutely failed to make any progress toward. (Unless letters count, in which case I’m fairly sure I wrote more like fifteen hundred or two thousand words … but they aren’t Shine Cycle prose.)

In addition to the Shine Cycle work I’ve reported, I also managed to write poems for Good Friday and Easter, and finish (for now) polishing, come up with titles for, and set to post three long-in-progress poems, one of which has already appeared and the other two of which will follow next week and two weeks after that. (Since I have more poems than just one to schedule at the moment, I’m stretching them out a bit by going every other week instead of every week.)

And, as I mentioned, I wrote a couple of letters that were sitting at the top of my “personal misc” task tracker for months.

But despite these successes, I can’t afford to rest on my laurels … even if I maintained the rate of my most productive week this turn indefinitely, my task tracker thinks I wouldn’t get to outlining The Counter by scene (after starting to outline it by sequence this month) until late 2019. Just like the proverbs say, one step, or one bite, at a time, and “to keep me honest” the following goals for the next month:

Continue regular work on Shine Cycle development (the prerequisite for any substantial progress at all).
Write at least least five character biographies.
Do “snowflake step 2” for at least three planned novels.
Schedule at least three Shine Cycle-related posts that aren’t already scheduled to run.
Finish outlining The Counter by sequence.
Stretch Goal: Get at least halfway through outlining The Cross by sequence.
Answer at least two of the remaining (i.e. having been skipped in my last pass) “Wrede [worldbuilding] questions” (to my satisfaction for now).
Write at least a hundred words of “actual prose.”

We’ll see whether I can keep my progress (and maybe even progress rate improvements) so far this year going.

Filed under: Status updates

Shine Cycle Character Profile: Primrose

This is the next in the series of profiles of characters who will appear in the Shine Cycle, my fantasy-series-in-preparation.

Primrose – Princess in Vaynaheim and High Queen of the Empire until her final death in the War of Power. Heroine of the Sunshine Civil War, she married the King after that war but before his coronation and was crowned with him. Probably the greatest prophet in the Empire during her lifetime.

A tall, striking woman, her long black hair flows down her back. Until her marriage and coronation she eschewed robes entirely except on rare formal occasions, preferring clothing that was easier to move in, but after her marriage and coronation she has to wear robes of state most of the time. On all but the most formal of occasions she wears a light golden circlet rather than the heavy crown.

In her relative youth, Primrose was witty and playful, edging toward but not quite reaching the point of caprice, only displaying a serious mien when the situation required it. As the decades wore on, these sides of her reversed: she began reserving her wit for particular circumstances, and usually cast a solemn eye over the court. What did not changed was her visible passion for justice, equity, and liberty, and for her husband.

When not on state visits or on campaign, or in periods when the court is recessed, she sits in her own court from the late morning to early afternoon, then, after a luncheon, joins her husband and his court for the afternoon session.

Her strongest talents with the Power tend primarily toward foresight and insight, but she is also a powerful, skilled, and experienced war-mage, and also can show charisma strongly enough to hold an apparently-outclassed army together.

Primrose was born in Vaynaheim in the fourth decade of the existence of the world of the Shine Cycle. As she grew up there, at first precociously and then slowly as is common among mages and especially the Vaynar, she learned the Power, statecraft, and war in times of conflict and peace.

Eventually, when her elder and distant cousin Lord sent word from the Sunshine Kingdom of the war beginning there to remove the tyrant, she was sent there as part of the small delegation to investigate and render what aid they thought necessary. Soon after her arrival, she met Lord’s son Jon. For the rest of the war she worked closely with him, and the two fell in love. They were married soon after the end of the war.

After the war, when Jon was elected king of the Sunshine Kingdom, she was crowned with him. From then on most of her activities were constrained by her office, but she returned to Vaynaheim at least twice every decade, and tried to visit every country of the Empire at least once every decade to keep a proper perspective. Amid all of this, the intervening wars, and the busy life of a queen, she also bore several children.

In the years before the War of Power, she foresaw disaster befalling the Shine and Wild Empire and its allies. Accordingly, she made plans that enabled the orderly evacuation, isolation, and eventual restoration of the two continents for the period, and just before beginning her last quest she made final arrangements for the care of her newborn daughter.

Filed under: Character Profiles

Writing status update (#36)

It’s been about a month since my last report on my development of the Shine Cycle, my fantasy series-in-preparation, so whether I have any progress to report or not it’s time for an update.

To sum the month up very briefly, I’ve been sick with a severe respiratory ailment for the past two and a half weeks or so, but I’ve still somehow managed to make some progress on the Shine Cycle. For more specific examples, let’s take a look at the goals I set last month.

Continue regular work on Shine Cycle development (the prerequisite for any substantial progress at all).

As sick as I was, getting “regular work” in on anything was impossible.

Write at least least two character biographies.

I actually managed three.

Do “snowflake step 2” for at least two planned novels.

I did manage to meet this.

Post at least two Shine Cycle-related post before the next status update.

And I managed this: a character profile and a précis.

Create super-sequence outlines for at least one of the “Alternate Universes” sub-series.

I did this for one, and I also considered and decided to discard another alternate-history idea.

Write at least a hundred words of “actual prose.”

None.

On the other hand, I also spent some time and considerable thought working on my collection of fragmentary and unfinished poetry, and extended two poems to the point that I think they’re finished enough and presentable, except that neither has a title yet and at least one of them really needs a “real” title. I got started on this side project because I finally got the incomplete poems, Shine Cycle and Strategic Primer ideas, and collected quotes off of my AlphaSmart portable keyboard.

To sum up, I am very pleased with how much I managed to do given that I’ve scarcely had the energy to get out of bed for nearly half the month.

Now, looking forward to the next four or so weeks: I’m still recovering from this illness, and I have classwork that will demand increasing amounts of time and mental effort, but on the other hand I can hope I’ll have my strength back, and I want to get in the habit of making progress so I can get closer to finishing things faster. Thus the following goals:

Resume and continue regular work on Shine Cycle development (the prerequisite for any substantial progress at all).
Write at least least two character biographies.
Write at least one character history.
Do “snowflake step 2” for at least three planned novels.
Post at least two Shine Cycle-related post before the next status update.
Create super-sequence outlines for at least two of the “Alternate Universes” sub-series.
Make a good start on outlining The Counter by sequence.
Write at least a hundred words of “actual prose.”

As I always say, we shall see.

Filed under: Status updates

Shine Cycle Character Profile: Rosabel

This is the latest of an intermittent series of profiles of characters who will appear in the Shine Cycle.

Rosabel – Bard, princess at large, journeyman mage, and a Deputy Minister of State. She has studied music under various bards, the Power under Windstorm and Waker, and diplomacy under the King, to whom she is a high-level aide.

A somewhat tall, slender woman, she keeps her hair pulled well back from her face. She dresses in somewhat close-fitting, brightly colored robes, creating a distinctive yet utterly professional impression. She carries herself with a gentle poise, yet is hardly ever entirely still, popping up to deliver a thought-provoking interjection in Parliament or moving so lightly through crowded halls as to be almost dancing.

In moments of relaxation Rosabel still shows signs of the bubbly, careless attitude she exuded when she arrived, and even after so many years of experience her eyes are still bright with witty joy, but over the course of her first several years she learned to work at whatever alloted task with seriousness and diligence.

As a Deputy Minister, she keeps regular office hours. She divides most of the rest of her time between research in various libraries, training in the Power either at the College of Mages or under the supervision of a great-mage, and music, either practicing with her clarinet or her voice or listening to a concert.

In her study of the Power, Rosabel has aimed to be a generalist. Study with Windstorm and Waker has revealed a slightly greater aptitude for workings related to either weather or the mind, but she has focused her research and practice on understanding and mastering the principles underlying all areas of applied metaphysics.

Rosabel began studying music at the Bardic Academy within two months after her arrival, but no more than two months after that she also found a job as a very junior aide in the Ministry of State. She had no trouble balancing her two roles for several years, until, when she was a journeyman, the combination of the discovery of unicorn country, the negotiation of a peace treaty, and other urgent matters caused the Ministry to demand as many hours’ work from all staffers as they could provide, with some threatened dismissals in some departments.

After a few weeks of overtime, and seeing her colleagues’ serious but cheerful diligence, she found that her “default” attitude had changed, from a carefree happy-go-lucky indifference and near-apathy to a sober seriousness edging into ambition. She redoubled her efforts in her studies to quickly gain her bardic Mastery, then turned her full attention to her job, volunteering for difficult assignments in distant places to gain experience, at some slight cost to her immediate advancement. Over the next eight years she made three such trips to countries near the other end of the two continents, and one to an island chain well off the eastern coast.

Once things settled down again, she began studying rhetoric at the Academy. Less than a year after her first classes there, she began participating in amateur but formalized debates, reviving an interest from before her arrival in the Empire, and a hobby she continued as time permitted from then on.

After a few years at the Academy, her metaphysical potential was discovered, She was granted an immediate leave of absence from both the Ministry of State and the Academy to learn what she can in that area, and passed from novice to apprentice and thence to journeyman in short order before deciding to return to her post.

After the war that began only about five years after she left the College of Mages, Rosabel again took what opportunities she could to travel, including to the Rivers Kingdom and the Electrian Kingdom, among other destinations over the course of more than a decade. On each trip, she made a point of using any time on leave to study the Power, music, or statecraft and diplomacy with local mages, bards, or political leaders.

In one recently-liberated district, she found that the root of the problems she was sent to investigate was conflicting habits, expectations, and assumptions (and some lingering resentment) between the recently-freed natives, settlers from more populated areas of the Empire, a local Lesser Fairy, and a local dragon; when she brought all sides to agreement on a treaty that then held for a year with no signs of imminent conflict, Parliament made her a princess at large.

After her last trip in that period, she took an overdue sabbatical, and used the time to study statecraft with the King, at his invitation. A few years after that, he asked her to become an aide reporting to him directly in addition to her (thereafter reduced) State Ministry duties.

Filed under: Character Profiles

Writing status update (#35)

With February now more than a week old, it’s been a week longer than I’d meant to go before giving a status report on my development of the Shine Cycle, my fantasy series-in-preparation. My last was combined with the year-end goal-setting. But now that I’ve realized that it’s been that long, here’s how the last month went.

In many previous months, I’ve lacked either time, energy or motivation, or opportunity to write or otherwise work on Shine Cycle development. This month, I’ve had time, I’ve had motivation, and I’ve had opportunity—just almost never all at the same time. So I got very little done.

When I set the goals I forgot that I would have letters, if not classwork assignments, that would demand my writing effort, which is part of why I got so little done this month.

But let’s look specifically at the goals I set for the month.

Continue regular work on Shine Cycle development (the prerequisite for any substantial progress at all).

My work on this was highly intermittent.

Write at least least three character biographies.

I managed one.

Do “snowflake step 2” for at least two planned novels.

I actually did two, but the second one only in the last few days.

Post at least two Shine Cycle-related post before the next status update.

Only one.. Not for lack of material, just time, motivation, and opportunity never coinciding.

Create super-sequence outlines for at least two of the “Alternate Universes” sub-series.

As with “snowflake step 2,” I did one, then only managed a second in the last few days.

Write at least a hundred words of “actual prose.”

Nothing, as usual.

Now for the next month. I’ll again have letters to write (not that I’ve finished all the letters I should have sent by now), but I still hope they won’t be all the writing I do.

Continue regular work on Shine Cycle development (the prerequisite for any substantial progress at all).
Write at least least two character biographies.
Do “snowflake step 2” for at least two planned novels.
Post at least two Shine Cycle-related post before the next status update.
Create super-sequence outlines for at least one of the “Alternate Universes” sub-series.
Write at least a hundred words of “actual prose.”

We’ll see.

Filed under: Status updates

Shine Cycle 2015 Review, 2016 Goals

As the civil year comes to an end, it’s time to look back over the past year and forward to the next. I summarized the year on this blog at the end of the Church year, including a summary of Shine Cycle-related posts, so this week I’ll look at the goals I set a year ago, and set new ones. Today, the goals related to the Shine Cycle, my fantasy series in preparation, and also my regular monthly status update.

2015 Goals

First, let’s see how I did compared to the goals I set a year ago for the Shine Cycle:

Most of my goals were, as usual, repetitions of ones I’d made progress toward but failed to accomplish the previous year.

Outlining

Goal: In my iterative outlining, get at least to the end of the saga in the current pass—which is converting “super-sequence” outlines to outlines by “sequence”, deciding on point-of-view characters, and creating tentative loglines.

I made a fair amount of progress on this one, but didn’t get anywhere near finishing.

Intermediate Goal: Have at least a general (“super-sequence”) outline of every “main-line” story, plus the “Game of Life”, by July.

I haven’t finished this even by now. I think that I have at least “super-sequence” outlines for every “main-line” story, but some of the Game of Life ones are still at the “premise-only” stage … largely because Alternate Universes stories have been coming for outlining up in my task tracker before Game of Life stories.

Goal: Have at least one “polished” logline.

While I’ve kept creating tentative loglines, I haven’t tried to significantly polish one.

Stretch Goal: Get at least half-way through the “snowflake method” for at least one story.

I didn’t meet this … but that’s partly because I decided earlier this year to do each stage of the process for many stories before going on to the next stage, instead of working on each story from stage one to stage ten.

Background and Worldbuilding

I did better on this category.

Goal: Write at least four character histories.

I vastly exceeded this goal, writing twelve character histories.

Intermediate Goal: One character history by April, two by July, three by October.

According to my records, I wrote one in January, one in February, one in May, three in June, one in July, one in August, one in September, one in October, and two in December.

Goal: Finish working through the “Deep Culture Fractalling System” (that is, the “worldview” part, which is all that’s been posted …) for the Imperial culture.
Intermediate Goal: Finish “Step 3: Reality.”

I met this goal in April.

Actual Prose

Stretch Goal: Get at least halfway (probably about 50,000 words, but assessed using the outline if the story turns out to be significantly shorter than that would indicate) through a draft of one of the (intended-to-be-novel-length) stories I’ve done at least preliminary planning for.

And nothing. As I suspected, since I knew I would have writing-heavy courses (but not how heavy they would be).

Monthly Status Update

In my last update, in the liturgical-year-end blog summary, I identified goals for the past month, which I’ll look at individually.

Continue regular work on Shine Cycle development (the prerequisite for any substantial progress at all).

More regular than the previous month, but not quite regular either.

Write at least two character histories and at least one character biography.

Done.

Do “snowflake step 2” for at least one planned novel.

Done.

Post at least two Shine Cycle-related post before the next status update.

I posted only one, the Counter précis.

Create super-sequence outlines for at least two of the “Alternate Universes” sub-series.

I didn’t even manage one.

Answer at least two of the “Wrede questions” that I postponed when I went through the list a few years ago.

I answered one.

Write at least a hundred words of “actual prose.”

Nothing, as has been usual.

Because I expect to be less busy with classwork for the next month, I’ll set my goals for the next month to be a little more ambitious, but base them on what I see coming in my task tracker for the next while.

Continue regular work on Shine Cycle development (the prerequisite for any substantial progress at all).
Write at least least three character biographies.
Do “snowflake step 2” for at least two planned novels.
Post at least two Shine Cycle-related post before the next status update.
Create super-sequence outlines for at least two of the “Alternate Universes” sub-series.
Write at least a hundred words of “actual prose.”

We’ll see.

2016 Goals

While I expect fewer demands on my time than the same time last year for the first few months, I don’t know what will come. But I’ve looked over the last year in my task tracker, taken the average “velocity,” and used that to predict what I’ll be able to do, to come up with the following goals.

Because I forgot to check my “intermediate goals” for 2015 until it was time to check all the goals, I’ve decided against setting “intermediate goals.” However, if I remember I intend to briefly check how I’m doing midway through the year, perhaps in July.

Outlining

Goal: In my iterative outlining, get at least “super-sequence” or “pre-sequence” outlines for at least six Alternate Universes stories.
Stretch Goal: Get at least sequence-level outlines for at least two Alternate Universes stories.
Goal: Decide on point-of-view characters for at least six Alternate Universes stories.
Goal: Get at least two of the Game of Life sub-series to at least the sequence level, and at least five more to the super-sequence level.
Stretch Goal: Get at least five Game of Life stories to at least the sequence level. (Including the two from the previous goal.)
Stretch Goal: Get at least one Game of Life story outlined to at least the scene level.
Goal: Get at least eight other non-“main-line” planned stories outlined to at least the super-sequence level.
Stretch Goal: Get at least one of those stories outlined to at least the sequence level.
Goal: Decide on point-of-view characters for Anarchy and at least the first third of the Reignalmia sub-series
Stretch Goal: Decide on point-of-view characters for all of the Reignalmia series.
Goal: Have at least one “polished” logline.
Stretch Goal: Have at least three “polished” loglines.
Goal: Get at least fifteen planned stories to at least step 2 (the first being the logline) of the “snowflake method”.
Stretch Goal: Get at least twenty planned stories to at least step 2 of the “snowflake method.”
Stretch Goal: Get to at least step 3 of the “snowflake method” for at least one story.
Goal: Create précis for at least five planned novels that I don’t already have one for.
Goal: Carefully check at least ten previously-posted précis against subsequent development.

Character Development

Goal: Write at least fifteen character biographies or histories.
Stretch Goal: Write at least twenty character biographies or histories.
Goal: Create “character loglines” or “motivation summaries” for at least five characters.
Stretch Goal: Create “character loglines” or “motivation summaries” for at least ten characters.

Worldbuilding

Goal: Answer at least seven questions from the “worldbuilding questions” devised by Patricia Wrede
Stretch Goal: Finish this pass (which leaves some notes like “TODO: answer this in more detail,” but should give at least some answer to every question) through the Wrede questions.

Actual Prose

Stretch Goal: Get at least halfway (probably about 50,000 words, but assessed using the outline if the story turns out to be significantly shorter than that would indicate) through a draft of one of the (intended-to-be-novel-length) stories I’ve done at least preliminary planning for.

Blogging

Goal: Post at least twelve Shine Cycle-related posts (not including writing status updates, year-end retrospectives, and the like) to this blog.
Stretch Goal: Post at least eighteen Shine Cycle-related posts (with the same exclusions) to this blog.
Stretch Goal: Post at least one Shine Cycle-related post (with the same exclusions) to this blog every month.

We’ll see.

Any thoughts? Writer friends, do you have any goals for the coming year?

Filed under: Shine Cycle, Status updates

Shine Cycle Précis: The Counter

The Counter is the third planned novel in the “Game of Life” sub-series of the Shine Cycle, following The Alliance. Today’s post is a brief introduction to this planned work.

As in the previous two volumes of the “Game of Life” subseries, the scene is our world in the future, this time the mid-twenty-fourth century, not quite a century after the events of The Alliance. The main and point-of-view character is again Alice Hansen, also known as Alatumbra, an SCA enthusiast, linguist, and by now somewhat experienced mage and (despite her inclinations) politician and diplomat.

The tentative logline for The Counter is:

When Earth receives advance warning of Gondolor yet again returning to try for revenge, Alice Hansen aka Alatumbra, liaison between Earth’s people and the outside forces defending it, must lead her country’s smmall space navy in preparing a defense to prevent Gondolor from reaching the planet’s surface.

In the decades since the end of the previous volume, Earth has again changed significantly. Second colonies have been established on both the Moon and Mars, and one was attempted in the Asteroid Belt, but finally failed only a couple of decades before this volume begins. There is a major university on Mars.

Perhaps most notably, about three decades after The Alliance, the Fourth World War devastates most of Europe, much of North Africa, and the Near East, among other areas. Rebuilding Europe takes decades, but Islam fades back into obscurity after the damage throughout the areas it once ruled.

Technology has attempted new challenges, with mixed success. A space elevator is built, but only lasts for about thirty years before it fails, and eventually collapses. Research into nanotechnology resumes, due to economic pressure, despite taboos dating back to the late twenty-first century. And the expanding human presence outside lunar orbit brings changes: ships begin to be constructed entirely in space, and a semi-regular “data trade” (caravans of itinerant spaceship-sized data centers moving between colonies) begins.

After The Alliance, Earth’s governments become more generally involved in diplomacy with the Shine and Wild Empire, Elvida, and their other allies. One of the first fruits of this engagement is a new international treaty (one of the first on this scale since the collapse of the United Nations) governing genetic engineering, but it also leads to joint military exercises in the less-traveled areas of the solar system.

It is in the aftermath of those military exercises that news of Gondolor’s escape comes. Alice Hansen (who may even bring this warning) knows that he is heading toward Earth yet again, undoubtedly to try for revenge with yet more knowledge and experience of Earth’s cultures and peoples, where he could set off an all-but-indefinite standoff if he were allowed to reach Earth’s surface. Even if he merely established a base of any kind anywhere in the system, the conflict could drag on for a long time.

But even with their allies, and even after the recent training exercises, Earth’s space navies are small and untested, and defeating Gondolor alone seems either unlikely or impossible. Reinforcements are coming, but they will have to prepare, then hold him off long enough, and fighting a purely defensive battle will certainly make his eventual capture far more difficult.

So Alice organizes as much of a defense in depth as the navies can muster, then leads them in responding to Gondolor’s attack, somehow fighting him off as he tries to descend through the fleet layers into Earth’s atmosphere. Once he is forced to retreat to regroup, she counterattacks to keep him from gathering enough strength to overwhelm a weak point, and the battles continue until reinforcements arrive and capture Gondolor.

While I hadn’t thought of this until preparing this précis, I think it’s likely that at least part of the story will take Alice to the Mars colonies, since Gondolor will attempt to land there once it’s clear that Earth is too strongly defended. He might also try to use something from the failed Belt colony. We’ll see.

Do you have any thoughts about my plans for The Counter?

Filed under: Précis

Shine Cycle year-end summary and writing status update

This is the last week of the year on the Christian liturgical calendar, so (as in past years) posts this week will look back over the past year on the blog. First, let’s look back at the Shine Cycle worldbuilding and other background material that’s appeared here in the past year, since last year’s year-end summary. After that, I’ll give a report on my progress since my last status update.

Retrospective

First, our look back over the year that ends this week.

Content on the blog, across all its “departments”, was fairly thin this year, after I ran out of existing material in previous years and had increased competing demands on my time this year.

Précis

I have not given up on my goal of filling out the series outline with brief introductions to every book I’m planning for the Shine Cycle, but after I finished the “main line” of the series last year that got somewhat stalled. However, I did post one more précis last month:

In October, I posted the précis of The Alliance, the planned second book in the “Game of Life” sub-series.

I have also finished one for The Counter, and will post it next week.

Characters

I also posted a handful of character profiles. This was the most common kind of Shine Cycle-related content on the blog this year, since I finally finished some character histories.

This year’s character profiles included the following:

Adolphus, ADC to Argentmentes
Amanda, author of the daily Palace briefings in Stone of Power
Duncan, last of the Sky Knights
Waker, one of the strongest mages alive

Miscellaneous

In addition to these posts specifically about the Shine Cycle and its characters, and my “monthly” status updates, I also offered some alternate-history ideas to any interested writer, since I realized that I’m almost certainly not going to use them, and I want to read something using them.

Status Update

In the month and a half since my last status update, I’ve made more progress than I expected, but less than I’d hoped. I’ll explain by comparing my results to the goals I set in the first week of October:

Continue regular work on Shine Cycle development (the prerequisite for any substantial progress at all).

Here, as usual, I failed. I had a couple of highly-productive weeks, and several weeks of no work on the Shine Cycle at all.

Create super-sequence outlines for three of the “Alternate Universes” sub-series.

I just managed this, making three and no more.

Answer at least two of the “Wrede questions” that I postponed when I went through the list a few years ago.

I answered two with as full an answer as I generally do (which isn’t as much as I’d like), and a third with a highly cursory answer.

Write loglines for at least one of the planned stories that doesn’t have them yet.

Failure, partly (but only partly) excused because that didn’t come up in my task tracker.

Do “snowflake step 2” for at least one planned novel.

This I managed, though only for one (The Invasion, by the way).

Write at least two character histories and at least one character biography.

Failure, but partial credit: I wrote one biography and sketched but didn’t finish one history.

Post at least two Shine Cycle-related post before the next status update.

The period since my last writing status post has seen the most Shine Cycle-related posts all year: two character profiles and one précis.

Write at least a hundred words of “actual prose.”

Utter failure here, as usual: schoolwork took all of my “actual writing”

I plan to combine my next “writing status update” with my civil-year-end summary, at the end of December. In that time, I plan to attempt and hope to accomplish something like the following goals:

Continue regular work on Shine Cycle development (the prerequisite for any substantial progress at all).
Write at least two character histories and at least one character biography.
Do “snowflake step 2” for at least one planned novel.
Post at least two Shine Cycle-related post before the next status update.
Create super-sequence outlines for at least two of the “Alternate Universes” sub-series.
Answer at least two of the “Wrede questions” that I postponed when I went through the list a few years ago.
Write at least a hundred words of “actual prose.”

As always, we’ll see. Until then, do you have any thoughts?

Filed under: Administrivia, Shine Cycle, Status updates

Shine Cycle Character Profile: Waker

This is the latest of an intermittent series of profiles of characters who will appear in the Shine Cycle.

Waker – Great-mage. She is universally acknowledged as the best Power in the field of sleep and waking and at Master-level in nearly every other. Since her first year in the Empire, when her aptitude came to light, she has immersed herself in searching for new applications of her existing workings (already orders of magnitude better than her competition) or for new workings using existing techniques.

A somewhat short and slender, fair-haired woman, she wears a long-sleeved dark robe covered in bright, often golden, designs. In public there is something in her bearing that projects aloofness and superiority, and she keeps her face impassive, but among friends she relaxes, smiles, and laughs.

When she first arrived, she was prone to barely-restrained feelings of anger, in addition to homesickness and confusion. But as she quickly gained experience in the Power, this was all replaced by a sparklingly-bright happiness under the facade of quiet confidence.

Letters she writes to colleagues describing her discoveries are often adapted into feature articles in trade journals, and the techniques that do not require extensive background experience or unusual finesse usually are quickly added to the curriculum of the College of Mages.

In the days following her arrival, Waker found herself stricken with melancholia and homesickness so strong that she could be no more than minimally productive for her entire first month there. Then, as that faded, she became very angry with her circumstances, but after a few more days she decided to try to set her anger aside and make the best of it.

At that point, she enrolled in a cultural-orientation course, but when she took an aptitude test about six months into it, the assessment revealed a strong potential in the Power, so she left the course and entered the College of Mages.

In her studies there, she showed herself to be clearly gifted in the Power, but because the first several years of the curriculum only touched very briefly and rarely on any topic related to either sleep or waking, she seemed to be a “normal” gifted student mage. She passed through the College as a novice, apprentice, and journeyman mage, then stood for and won her mastery in about as long as most student mages did.

A couple of years after her Mastery, as she looked into additional subjects to research as she prepared for her great-mage exam, she turned her attention to the subject of sleep. Even in her initial forays, she found her workings in this category to be far more powerful and precise, and far easier for her to perform, than she had expected. Further experimentation confirmed this unusual result and revealed and helped her expand the limits of her particular aptitude.

A year after she was made great-mage, she began a tour of the Empire to make contacts and collect ideas for future research. This tour took her more than a decade to complete, because she frequently stayed in a given location for several months at a time and made a point of venturing to less-often-visited areas.

After she finished the tour, she retired to a private life research in a small country town. She has kept in touch with friends and other contacts by letter, and has welcomed visitors and accepted and trained students on occasion, but she has not returned to the capital or any other major city except when all but begged to by the Imperial government.

Filed under: Character Profiles

Shine Cycle character profile: Duncan

This is the latest of an intermittent series of character profiles; the others are linked from their own Page.

Duncan – Sky Knight (Knight of the Order of the Shooting Star). The last Sky Knight, he was poised to resurrect the order and make substantial innovations in other areas, but somehow he sabotaged his progress and contributed to the order’s destruction; it was revived without his help after the First Battle of High Powers.

A somewhat tall young man with dark brown hair, his armor, the last masterpiece of the armorers that served the old order of Sky Knights, is engraved all over with scenes from the order’s history and from mythology, and his shield bears his coat of arms, a thunderhead under a crossed sword and lightning bolt.

In the heat of battle, Duncan can be a more than competent, or even gifted, tactician, and generally heartily brave; away from battle, he often has apt insight into what must be done, but too often lacks the determination and will to see it carried out. He spends much of his time in the pursuits that interest him, resulting in a frequent need to hasten to finish other tasks just before they come due—though he is rarely actually late, for meetings or in meeting formal deadlines.

Duncan began training to become a knight at the Academy soon after he arrived. Over the next several years, he made his way through the program without making a name for himself, but without ever coming too close to flunking out or even having to repeat more than a course or two.

After completing that first phase at the Academy, he was taken as a squire by a competent but usually unimaginative knight, a veteran of wars before the formation of the Empire. In his years as a squire, Duncan heard his knight-master speak often and admiringly of the Sky Knights, an order (the Order of the Shooting Star) of mage-knights based in Snowmane (see the map) who had a nearly-legendary role in keeping that country from being overrun in the past, but which had been in decline for years.

After finishing his time as a squire and being knighted, Duncan learned that he had some metaphysical potential, and so began studying in the College of Mages. As he had at the Academy, he completed his studies as a novice and apprentice without distinguishing himself as either a particularly good or bad student. A few years into his studies as a journeyman, weary of the College and sensing he was nearing the limit of his abilities, he withdrew and set out on a journey across the Empire in search of the Sky Knights.

At length he found the stronghold that was the headquarters of the Sky Knights. The order was severely depleted, having had far fewer recruits than usual since the unification of the Shine and Wild Empire, so when he asked to join they accepted him even though he wasn’t quite up to the order’s usual standards yet in strength or skill.

Over the next several years, Duncan trained with the Order’s knights, but one by one most of the older knights, already battered from the wars of their youth, began to lose strength and die. The remaining knights participated in the Sixth War of the Dragon, which began about a decade after Duncan’s admission to the order, as a unit, and took heavy enough casualties that every remaining knight more senior than Duncan was either killed or wounded so significantly he had to retire completely.

On their return from the war, Duncan reluctantly took command of the Order. He began a recruiting drive, the most significant in more than a generation, but this had but limited success.

About a decade after he became the order’s commander, “bandits,” more organized than the tribes that lived across Snowmane’s southern border ever were, began raiding the area. The knights managed to drive them off several times, but eventually one attack on the knights’ fortress itself left Duncan with no choice but to in desperation activate the ‘doomsday’ working placed in its stones by the order’s founders. This working sealed the Hall of Records and training ground against anyone and everyone indefinitely, until a worthy successor came to open them. When the battle was over, Duncan could not open the seals.

With this failure, Duncan retired into obscurity.

Filed under: Character Profiles