Hugo Negron's Blog - Posts Tagged "lessons"
Forging of a Knight and other new quests
IN THE BEGINNING…
The idea for this series started a LONG way back – grade school, as a matter of fact. A fascination with historical books on fantasy and mythology, and being influenced by works written by J.R.R. Tolkien, H.P. Lovecraft, the Hildebrandt Brothers (does anyone remember their foray into writing fantasy, Urshurak?), Robert E. Howard, and a host of others, gave way to an interest in writing about it. All of these writers created their own worlds, and populated them with unique cultures, creatures, heroes, and villains. My first tinkering was definitely not up to par. If anyone can recall the old Thundarr cartoon, my initial stories strongly paralleled it!
Over time the adventures of Qualtan grew into the occasional hobby – writing a new chapter here, removing an old chapter there. As reality kicked in (school, jobs, bills, worrying about money to PAY those bills, etc.) the stories become lost in piles of old memories and were only rediscovered when I moved out on my own. At one point, they ended up as trash, being thrown out as a childhood exercise in boredom. But for some reason, I went back to that trash can a few hours later and retrieved them, thinking they deserved a better review. The creative spark was rekindled, and the process of writing a new chapter here, removing an old chapter there, began again.
Fast forward years later, and my wife took an interest in my stories as I poured through what was now an enormous pile of paper, notebooks and random notes. Despite the years of on and off again writing, the stories had now grown with me and their basic premises were memorized. As I talked about them, and how neat it would have been to have seen them in novel form, she asked me why hadn’t I ever tried to do anything with them. I thought, camaan, to go through them all, make sense out of all the details, maturate the storylines, why bother?
Why not?! was the answer.
Why not, indeed? So I took the first story, and over a year, polished, updated, and clarified. I hired an editor to do clean-up, an illustrator to draw the cover, and found lulu.com in order to bind, prepare and set up for online epub and hard copy accessibility.
So now we are nearly at the “go live” stage – sure, there’s magic, monsters, and strange, wonderful places to visit within this first tale, but there are also lessons in friendship, trust, expectations, and that little naiveté all of us can have when starting off into something brand new, that almost always gets tempered with a slight dash of disappointment, a pinch of cynicism, and a spoonful of real vs. assumed expectations. This is something we can all relate to, whether you’re carrying around a mystic sword or not.
And this is only the start…both here and on my facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/Forging.of.a.... I'll be adding snippets on the characters, updates on what is coming next and some great giveaway contests as well as we lead up to the release of the first book in the Forging of a Knight series...
The idea for this series started a LONG way back – grade school, as a matter of fact. A fascination with historical books on fantasy and mythology, and being influenced by works written by J.R.R. Tolkien, H.P. Lovecraft, the Hildebrandt Brothers (does anyone remember their foray into writing fantasy, Urshurak?), Robert E. Howard, and a host of others, gave way to an interest in writing about it. All of these writers created their own worlds, and populated them with unique cultures, creatures, heroes, and villains. My first tinkering was definitely not up to par. If anyone can recall the old Thundarr cartoon, my initial stories strongly paralleled it!
Over time the adventures of Qualtan grew into the occasional hobby – writing a new chapter here, removing an old chapter there. As reality kicked in (school, jobs, bills, worrying about money to PAY those bills, etc.) the stories become lost in piles of old memories and were only rediscovered when I moved out on my own. At one point, they ended up as trash, being thrown out as a childhood exercise in boredom. But for some reason, I went back to that trash can a few hours later and retrieved them, thinking they deserved a better review. The creative spark was rekindled, and the process of writing a new chapter here, removing an old chapter there, began again.
Fast forward years later, and my wife took an interest in my stories as I poured through what was now an enormous pile of paper, notebooks and random notes. Despite the years of on and off again writing, the stories had now grown with me and their basic premises were memorized. As I talked about them, and how neat it would have been to have seen them in novel form, she asked me why hadn’t I ever tried to do anything with them. I thought, camaan, to go through them all, make sense out of all the details, maturate the storylines, why bother?
Why not?! was the answer.
Why not, indeed? So I took the first story, and over a year, polished, updated, and clarified. I hired an editor to do clean-up, an illustrator to draw the cover, and found lulu.com in order to bind, prepare and set up for online epub and hard copy accessibility.
So now we are nearly at the “go live” stage – sure, there’s magic, monsters, and strange, wonderful places to visit within this first tale, but there are also lessons in friendship, trust, expectations, and that little naiveté all of us can have when starting off into something brand new, that almost always gets tempered with a slight dash of disappointment, a pinch of cynicism, and a spoonful of real vs. assumed expectations. This is something we can all relate to, whether you’re carrying around a mystic sword or not.
And this is only the start…both here and on my facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/Forging.of.a.... I'll be adding snippets on the characters, updates on what is coming next and some great giveaway contests as well as we lead up to the release of the first book in the Forging of a Knight series...
