/ Courtney / Writing

my light-walkers universe timeline

This post is nothing more than me geeking out over my own storyverse.

I indulged a bit a few weeks ago when I blogged about all the stories in the Light-Walker universe thus far, as well as the LW stories I have in mind for the rest of my natural life (and maybe beyond; we’ll see if I can figure out how to put stories into the world from the other side of eternity. Oooh, ALL THE HAUNTED QUILLS AND INKWELLS…).

*ahem* ‘Scuse me.

I gots a LOOOOOOOOT of detail on my in-storyverse history. I promise, even for you two die-hard Light-Walkers fans out there, these 50 pages are way more information than even you want to know.

Anyway, this time I’m going deeper into nerdery by sharing with you a portion of the timeline I’ve established throughout the LW stories. I won’t share the complete timeline here. Firstly, because it’s full of the chock of spoilers. In related news, it’s also 50 pages long. So yeah.

Thus, the abbreviated version.

WARNING

If you continue reading this post but you haven’t read all of the stories, then HERE THERE BE SPOILERS.

The Light-Walkers Universe Timeline

WARNING: from here on, SPOILERS ABOUND.

Are you sure you want to keep reading?

I HAVE DONE MY DUE DILIGENCE BY YOU.

ONWARD, YE BRAVE SOUL.

I’m including dates, events, names, and story titles. All of this will relate only to already-published stories. So it’s stuff you should already have read if you’re choosing not to leave this post now!

There’s nothing more I can do for you. 😘

The Light-Walkers Universe Timeline

AA = After the Arrival
AR = After the Return

60 AA
The Witch and the Wayfarer Tree

3785 AA
Gerry arrives in Uelsaemor. (“Gateway Drug”)

3787 AA
Rafe Skelleran first enters Jiredd Stalbeleht. All but three Light-Walkers are lost to the Beyond. Raphael begins the search for the lost Light-Walkers. (The Dying of the Light; The Chronicles of Raphael)

3788 AA
Abby arrives in Uelsaemor. (“Gateway Drug”)

4122 AA
Raphael returns Asaale to Jiredd Stalbeleht. (“The Eater”)

4123 AA / 0 AR
Sister of the Sable Flame

1303 AR
Return of the Pelegrin

1334-1335 AR
The Flight of Elfled unBlessed

1337-1389 AR
The Court of the Seven

1338 AR
Quylin Flint and her ternion disappear in the Ried’e Besiad. (“Out of the Darkness”)
Rethana Chosardal becomes comor’mel to Allasin Calarasi. Meleghaine of Uelsaemor leads the Skardi in war against Jiredd Stal. Rethana and Chel Chosardal thwart Meleghaine by dissolving the Triad Gate. Death of Shaddix Falladd. (“Rethana’s Tower,” Rethana’s Surrender & Rethana’s Trial)

1356 AR
Elyria Daral-Akenath ra’Shaskalai of Kaldoril meets Ademar Sosthenes of Remnia. Elyria returns to Kaldoril and is crowned The ra’Shask. (“Oubliette”)

1357 AR
Blood Awakening 

1366 AR
Siffenwinch Skilflink Is Tapped Dry

1383 AR
Embers of the North

1577 AR
Joely Puck and Cressida Raith investigate the murder of Zheni Fenwyltr in Rocalisin Fhae. Revealing of Skardi relics. (The Priestess Murders)

2311 AR
The Galbraith Folly

2321 AR
Wolf Dornsson and Lendry Bersallir arrive in Enloë Vale. (“The Elven Dead”)

And there you have it. Fifty pages of history condensed into one blogpost that makes little sense to anyone but me. Yeah, I’m totally omphaloskepsizing. But it’s my blog. I can do that. 😎😉

I would LOVE to give you more detail than this — I know this timeline is rather meager! — but that really would spoiler things beyond imagining. For now though, I promise I’ll update this chronology as I release stories out into the world!

/ Courtney / Creativity

the definitive light-walkers post

That is a horrible title, but I don’t care.

So, in cobbling together my previous post (and in trying to navigate the new UI of WordPress that has interloped since last I blogged [by Grabthar’s Hammer, I HATE new user-interfaces]), I realized that I’ve never really done a comprehensive post about the Light-Walkers universe. Doing so might be more for my own benefit than for anyone else’s, but mayhap some of you will find it perusable if not grippingly fascinating.

The Light-Walkers universe has been in the making since at least 1992. Maybe since 1986. In 1986, the Armed Forces Network started airing a Marine recruitment ad in Germany, where I grew up. (AFN might have aired it all over Europe, but I don’t know know for sure.) The ad showed images of pseudo-medieval warriors on a life-sized chess board, and since 9-year-old me already harbored a love of chess and fantasy, I was hooked. Not by the Marines, but by the imagery and the music, which featured a chorus singing something that sounded Latin to me. But because I didn’t know Latin, my malleable brain came up with my own language for the song, and eventually I wrote down the syllables I heard.

Here’s the ad. You see why it grabbed me?!?

Fast-forward a few years, and I had a weird dream about a mutating phone booth and slitted yellow eyes staring at me from the darkness. When I was 17, I finally sat down to write the story to go with that image…and before I knew it, my pseudo-Latin scribbles from the Marine ad insisted on being included. Those syllables turned into a language I initially called Old Speech, spoken by a people called the Wanderers, which I think was my tribute to Susan Cooper’s The Dark Is Rising. VERY long story short, in the ensuing 2+ decades I’ve ended up with the following:

The Legends of the Light-Walkers (LLW)

 • Rethana’s Surrender (LLW #1)

 • Rethana’s Trial (LLW #2)

These two novels, plus short story “Rethana’s Tower,” tell the story of Rethana Chosardal, a magic-user whose decimated family is in hiding from their land’s religio-fascist ruler. Rethana ends up entangled in a civil war while trying to get her little sister back home.

Rethana’s story started life as one book, but in 2011 my then-publisher Consortium Books asked me to split it into a more manageable duology. In 2021, I plan to re-release an Author’s Preferred Edition that includes these two melded once more into one, plus a short story, all under the title Rethana’s Triad. Or Triad and Gold. Or Triad’s Bane. Or The Shadow of the Triad. Or… *sigh* I have two years to figure this out.

 • The Dying of the Light (LLW #3)

This book tells the tale of Rafe Skelleran, fallen star of the art world, who gets sucked into this crazy world of magic, betrayal, war, romance, desperation, non-humans, monsters, and near-immortals. He doesn’t exactly get a happy ending, and I still feel kinda bad about that.

Future Legends of the Light-Walkers Novels:

 • Sister of the Sable Flame will tell the story of Taeven “Ravenhair,” who has a cameo in Dying of the Light. Sable Flame will let us in on Taeven’s backstory, as well as her monumental role in rebuilding [redacted] after [redacted] is destroyed at the end of DotL. Oh, and we get to see how [redacted] from Rethana’s story gets created in the first place and why it’s so significant that Rethana and her sister destroy/transform it.

And if that’s not clear as mud, I don’t know how to help you.

 • Blood Awakening is my working title (subject to change five minutes from now) for the story of Deren Tehvs, son of Rethana. Deren gets to try figuring out who his real father is, all while fighting (joining?) outlaws, falling in love with very much the wrong girl, running from apparent evil incarnate, and oh there’s DRAGONS.

 • The Witch and the Wayfarer’s Tree is the working title for the story of Rowan of the First, one of the original founders of the Light-Walkers. A “wise woman” figure in DotL, she is mentor and guardian to Rafe Skelleran. But in Witch & Wayfarer, we delve into Rowan’s “futurepast” and find out who she really is. W&WT will be something of a sci-fi-fantasy that ties together most of the series as well as assorted pubbed and as-yet-unpubbed short stories.

 • Embers of the North concerns Chali Tehvs, whose birth parents have cameos in Rethana’s story. Chali isn’t actually a Tehvs at all. She knows exactly where she comes from, and she knows that her lineage should give her all the clout she needs to get accepted into the “fae” (dragon rider) training program north of the capital. Needless to say, there are several somebodies who want to stop her. Also, she kind of gets to help found an empire of sorts, maybe?

So. That’s seven novels in the Legends of the Light-Walkers series. There might be more. Chali Tehvs hasn’t let me know yet if she really wants to be the one to round things out and tie up all the loose ends. I’m in no hurry to figure it out at this point. I don’t plan for LLW to go on indefinitely; 8 or 9 will be the upper limit, I think. But I’m leaving those decisions for Future Courtney.

Watchful Dragons

 • Watchful Dragons: Return of the Pelegrin, set in the Light-Walkers universe but on the other side of the continent from where the LLW series takes place; my work-in-progress as of this writing

I intended for this to be a stand-alone work, but it shows signs of wanting to be a series. Or at least a trilogy or something. Another problem for Future Courtney. Yay!

Other Light-Walker Novels and Short Stories

 • The Flight of Elfled unBlessed follows Elfled Gardail through the religio-fascist awfulscape of Rethana’s era as Elfled flees persecution, get separated from her family, and navigates the world as a young teenage refugee (not yet published)

 • The Priestess Murders, my first ever murder mystery, set two centuries after Rethana’s story (not yet published)

 • The Elven Dead and Other Legends of the Light-Walkers, a collection of fantasy short stories set in the Light-Walkers universe (free on Kindle as of this writing!)

 • The Galbraith Folly — set about 1000 years after the Rethana-Elfled-Pelegrin era, it’s the story of how a well-meaning elf queen really screwed up trying to save the world and accidentally turned all elves into nightwalkers and zombies. Oops.

Other Other Light-Walker Stories

Yeah, so this font is pretty much bottomless, if you hadn’t picked up on that yet.

 • Siffenwinch Skilflink Is Tapped Dry — I got a few chapters into this one years ago, then it petered out. But the Muse has renewed interest in it since certain Skilflinks showed up in Elfled Gardail’s story. I’ll be revisiting.

 • The Court of the Seven will be the story of Aletta Clerly, Elfled’s cousin. Aletta gets magic powers, meddles in the politics of two (three?) different countries, kidnaps a relative, and crowns a long-lost king. Her story spans five decades, and I’m probably going to cover all of them. So wow.

 • The Chronicles of Raphael — dunno if it’ll be a standalone novel, a standalone collection of short stories, or a series of something. But it’ll be all about Rafe Skelleran’s adventures bopping in and out of our world during the period between Dying of the Light and Sister of the Sable Flame.

Then there’s a bunch of vague ideas that just have a single plot point or a couple of characters so far:

 • the one about my universe’s version of “elves,” aka Song Prophets, in which we get to see what happens when two of the elf bloodlines get mixed with human DNA via twin girls who each have a different elf father

 • the one where my three main universes (Light-Walkers, Elevator, and Demons of Saltmarch) REALLY slam into each other for a big gooey mashup mess (Jop and Skee will be back! plus Rafe Skelleran and Jas Burleson)

 • a post-apocalyptic, Angela’s-Ashes-style epic set in the decade or so after Galbraith Folly

And…and I think maybe that’s it?

Ooooh, I know. Y’all REALLY need this (you know — the whole two of you who are still reading). Without further ado or adon’t, here’s the chronological order of all the novels and stories and ideas in the LLW universe. Ready? Set? FEAST YOUR SEEINGBALLS ON THIS:

Light-Walkers Universe Chronology

  1. The Witch and the Wayfarer Tree (not yet written)
  2. The Dying of the Light
  3. The Chronicles of Raphael (not yet written)
  4. triple-universe mashup with Rafe, Jas, Jop, and Skee
  5. “The Eater” (The Elven Dead)
  6. “Gateway Drug” (The Elven Dead)
  7. Sister of the Sable Flame (incomplete)
  8. Return of the Pelegrin (in-progress)
  9. The Flight of Elfled unBlessed (not yet published)
  10. The Court of the Seven (not yet written; takes place concurrently with #s 11.-.18)
  11. “Out of the Darkness” (The Elven Dead)
  12. “Rethana’s Tower” (The Elven Dead)
  13. Rethana’s Surrender
  14. Rethana’s Trial
  15. “Oubliette” (The Elven Dead)
  16. Blood Awakening (incomplete)
  17. Siffenwinch Skilflink Is Tapped Dry (incomplete)
  18. Embers of the North (not yet written)
  19. story about mixing elf and human DNA
  20. The Priestess Murders (not yet published)
  21. The Galbraith Folly (not yet written)
  22. post-apocalyptic epic with elf zombies
  23. “The Elven Dead”

And egad Brain, I think I’m done. Yikes, this was way more than I intended to write here, and I think it’s more for my use and clarity than for y’all’s. If I were a good little blogger, I’d shove some cover art in here somewhere. But it’s late, I’m tired, and I have acid reflux. So I’m not gonna.

/ Courtney / Writing

In case you miss me, I #amwriting. (NEW PROJECT! Next Legends of the Light-Walkers!)

So, I log on to my blog today and find that it’s been over a month since I posted.

I blame Bernard Schaffer.

Long story VERY short, Bernard issued me a writing challenge, and I am doing my blurglemamjufloobelschnitzenest to face that challenge head-on and blast it into submission. I’ve got two major short stories in the works, both set in my Legends of the Light-Walkers universe. I’ve also AS OF TODAY started work on my NEXT LIGHT-WALKERS NOVEL, which might be of interest to you LLW fans out there.

More on that in a sec.

Elevator People

But significant to all of this LLW writing is this announcement I was tinkled every shade of pink and purple to make YESTERDAY:

PEOPLE! The first draft of my low sci-fi or soft sci-fi or whatever-you-call it novel ELEVATOR PEOPLE is finished! IT’S DONE!!! In celebration, I hereby grant all of you the rest of the day off! Two years, 4 months, 13 days, 97,314 words, and I am DONE! WOOT!

Y’all, I don’t think I’ve ever felt so relieved to write THE END after the last line of a story. For all the various reasons I’ve blathered on about here before, this book was the hardest one I’ve ever finished. Probably the hardest one I’ve ever written. I harbor a sneaking suspicion that this means it’s either the best thing I’ve ever written…or the worst. Time and beta-reader feedback will tell. OH MABEL THE READER FEEDBACK ON THIS ONE. I might need to be institutionalized for the duration of beta-reader feedback.

That, however, is far in the future. For now, I can remain straightjacketless, as I shall let Elevator People sit and stew in its own juices for at least the net six weeks. Maybe eight weeks, I dunno. When I do return to it, I’ll read it straight through (doing as little editing as humanly possible), then tackle the editing and restructuring and rewriting. I’m actually looking forward to it, so it’s possible I’ll have to force myself to wait the entire six weeks. We shall see.

In the meantime, I get to leap fully nude into my next project, and I say fully nude because this one’s gonna be mucky and I really don’t wanna get it all over my clothes.

Legends of the Light-Walkers #3

This next project, my dears, is the COMPLETE REWRITE FROM THE GROUND UP OF MY LLW NOVEL FORMERLY ENTITLED LEGEND’S HEIR. Now entitled either Legends of the Light-Walkers: Legacy or This Novel Doesn’t Have a Title Yet or TNDHaTY.

For simplicity’s sake, I’m just gonna call it LEGACY for now.

Here’s the timeline of this novel:

1994 (age 17): began writing novel
1999: finished novel for Senior Seminar bachelor’s degree project in English/Creative Writing. And by “finished,” I mean, “completed first draft, gave it an editing once-over, and stuck it in a drawer for 13 years.”
2012: pulled novel out of drawer, measured

wordcount2

2012 (continued): said NO; butchered manuscript until usable parts drifted to the surface like choice meats in a vat of flesh-sludge; wrote new outline, new synopses, new character descrips, and story question
March 13, 2014: plunged nekkid into rewrite

So far, I’ve only gone through and sorted notes, trying to get a clear picture of what material I have to work with. That’s been a fun and illuminating trip down memory lane. I found a ton of stuff in the LEGACY notes that had nothing to do with the novel, such as German Bible verses, dates & times of doctor’s appointments, notes from my time as an Elfwood moderator, and lists of names that generally could suit a fantasy universe. Fun stuff, but not conducive to massive story rewrites.

rewriteAfter I finish perusing the notes and refamiliarizing myself with the story, I’ll start the actual writing. I’ve been going back and forth on whether or not I should dig up the old digital file and just cut, cut & paste, and reword within that file. But really, that would be me being INCREDIBLY UNFORGIVABLY LAISSEZ-FAIRE, and that’s not something a writer can afford to be (she said mournfully, longing for the days when she neither knew this nor cared to).

Instead, I’ll be typing it all out from scratch, following my outline and referencing the ancient, massive manuscript plunked on my table. Last night, I asked the husband where I should put it while I’m working with it, and his response was to offer me his entire desk. Either I have incredible support, or he’s more deeply sarcastic than I ever dreamed*.

So, there we are. If you miss my blogging, just know that I’m working on something that’s gonna be way more fun for you and me both. 😉

Heart-felt thanks to Bernard for giving me a healthy kick in the ass. And I mean that.

The Light-Walkers short stories “Rethana’s Tower” and “Untitled, so far,” as well as the novel Legends of the Light-Walkers: Legacy, will be published before December 31, 2014.

HERE WE GO. Oh, Mabel.

___________________
* Just kidding. He meant it. : )

/ Courtney / Random

oh, and i published another book; or: i am terrible at the marketing business

LONG story short, Elfled’s story is out in the world. Considering how much I love her and what I went through to get her here, I truly am not doing her justice. Sorry, Elfled. But I missed the window of making this post part of my all-too-brief book launch, so we’ll have to content ourselves with this what I’m writing at the moment.

THE ACCURSED is the epistolary YA fantasy story of Elfled Gardail, who flees her homeland because of religio-political persecution. To put it bluntly: the magic-wielding fascists are after her and her family, and Elfled, who has no magic, has to cross hostile territory as a refugee if she wants to find safety. The question is first what she’ll have to go through to get there, and second whether she’ll get there at all.

Noteworthy: Michael O’Keefe, who gave excellent, invaluable graphic design tutelage for cover art purposes; Brett Grimes, who gave useful feedback on said cover art; Joshua Unruh, who coached and edited my marketing copy; and my parents, who read the book and told me what worked and what didn’t. Thanks to all of you. Elfled wouldn’t be here without you.

THE ACCURSED is the latest novel in my newly rebranded Light-Walkers Universe Collection. It’s available as a paperback on Amazon and as an ebook wherever you like to get your ebooks! Go buy it. *kiss kiss*

/ Courtney / Writing

the one where i published another book last month

So, ICYMI, in the midst of Atheism for Lent, COVID, and a secondary viral infection, I somehow managed to publish another book.

No, I don’t know how. The past 50ish days are mostly a blur to me. Interspersed with the occasional moment of mostly miserable clarity. So I really have no clue what magic I worked to make both the book and the AfL blogging happen. The only thing I can come up with is undiagnosed-ADHD hyperfixation.

ANYWAY. The book in question is MALEFACTORS AND OTHER BLOODLINES OF THE LIGHT-WAKERS, my latest collection of short stories. They’re all set in, adjacent to, or somehow connected with my Light-Walkers universe. Some of them are high fantasy, some are sci-fi, and some are spec fic (or, as I like to say, simply pretty damn weird).

No matter what genre they call home, though, all of these stories are about the baddies.

The outlaws, the troublemakers, the outright dastardly villains. Sometimes, you get the perspective of the “good guys” — but in some of these, I put you squarely into Evil’s head. Good luck with that, if you dare try them out.

Even if you haven’t read any of my other Light-Walkers books (here, here and here), you can still read Malefactors without getting too confused. I’ve included maps, family trees, glossaries, and a universe timeline to help you out. Because I nerd out bigly over such things, and I’m hoping you do too.

Malefactors is a project of loving experimentation. These stories are near and dear to my heart, and I’m using them to test the boundaries of how far readers will follow me. I’d love to hear your feedback on them — what works and what doesn’t — and if you can leave a favorable review on all the book-selling platforms, I will adore you forever.

Speaking of platforms…there are a lot of them. I get my books out mostly via Draft2Digital; therefore, because I am also terrible at the business side of writing, I don’t actually know the names of all the platforms D2D distributes to at this time. But it’s A LOT. Whichever platform is your favorite, you can most likely find my books there. If you can’t, message me and we’ll see what we can do to rectify the situation.

Most accessible for me is Malefactors at Amazon, where you can currently buy it for $9.99 on Kindle or $15.99 in paperback. Happy reading!

XOXO

/ Courtney / Creativity

oh BY THE WAY…i got the book pubbed

And would you believe, I’ve been too busy with the next one to post about the one I spent almost all the second half of 2022 on?

That was an absolutely terrible sentence, and as a writer, I should know better.

But I don’t care.

I GOT THE BOOK DONE.

After a title change. HA HA HA, that joke was totally on me.

Of Scends and Triads is officially out in the world as…

The title change came about as I was creating the cover art. Yes, the oil painting on the cover as well as the design and trade dress are all me. It’s not ideal, it’s not perfect. But it’s my first ever book cover design, and I think it came out really well and I am immensely proud of it. I don’t know if it makes people want to buy the book (I have pretty much given up trying to figure out why people buy one book over another), but it makes me happy, and that’s all I care about atm. “If you build it, they will come.” I’ve made something (inside and out!) that I’m proud of, and I have to believe that its readers will find it.

Oh! But I was rambling on about the title change. In creating the cover, I could not, could not, COULD NOT get the “Of Scends and Triads” title to look right. I tried all manner of fonts and sizes and stylings, and it was just all wrong. Finally, after days of frustration, the thought suddenly popped into my head: “What if the problem isn’t the font? What if the problem is the title?”

Looked at optional titles list. Picked “The Triad Gate.” Stuck it on the cover. And BANGERANG, suddenly…

After that, it was just hop, skip, and resizing to arrive at the finalized cover art. YAY FREAKIN’ ME.

The book, in case you were wondering, is HERE. Don’t buy the paperback yet! I messed up the page numbers (i.e., there mysteriously aren’t any?), and I have to do some book surgery to fix it. So for now, stick with the ebook, ‘kay?

Love ya, readers. Love ya, people who buy my books even if you don’t read them. Every little bit helps! 😁

Oh, and the next book I’m working on is MALEFACTORS — AND OTHER BLOODLINES OF THE LIGHT-WALKERS, my second collection of fantasy/spec-fic short stories. I am having a blast with it.

Go buy THE TRIAD GATE!

XOXO

/ Courtney / Creativity

of scends and triads

That’s it.

That’s the title.

A “scend” is the surge created by a wave, which is doubly fun because this novel is set in a landlocked country. *laughs in maniacal confused*

As you might already know, my current project is to take my first two Light-Walker novels, Rethana’s Surrender and Rethana’s Trial, and squoosh them back together as the one book as which they began life.

And then some! Because this omnibus (ya’ll! I’m making an omnibus!) will also contain the short story “Rethana’s Tower,” at least 3 maps, Rethana’s family tree, a glossary, and an entire song translated from English into Lirren Eamnaya, the language I made up. An index! Appendices that are not bodily organs!

Why yes, this entire project is my gratuitous self-indulgence, and I couldn’t be more pleased, because I deserve it, thank you.

If I have time, I will redraw two of the maps (the originals are 20 years old) and draw a fourth one. But that’s only if I absolutely have time to do those AND upload to Amazon in time to publish before 00:01am on January 1st.

Also, ftr, I have no mapmaking skills beyond what I’ve taught myself. So dang.

Anyway, other than possible alterations to map content, I’ve finished the book’s interior. YAY. ME.

Next and forsooth, I have cover art to paint. Canvas acquisition shall take place this afternoon, and painting shall commence tonight.

Of Scends and Triads (Light-Walker Omnibus, Vol. 1) will hopefully come out no later than December 31, 2022.

/ Courtney / Writing

i keep saying i want to blog, but do i really?

For what I want to do, I do not do….

That’s an incomplete and out-of-context quote from a 1st-century Roman Jew named Paulus. But it fits. At the very least, it speaks to an insolvable aspect of the human condition. We so often know what good we need to do but can’t get ourselves to do it.

Lots of existential dreck bound up in those thoughts. But I don’t have the energy to delve into it all and make something brilliant out of these ruminations BECAUSE IN CASE YOU HAVEN’T NOTICED THE WORLD’S ON FIRE

(how ’bout yours?)

La la la.

I have a lot to do and not much year left to do it in. If you recall, Gentle Reader, Constant Reader, Faithful Reader, I’m putting together the 10th anniversary omnibus author’s preferred edition of my first two Light-Walker novels, Rethana’s Surrender and Rethana’s Trial. I’m tightening up the writing, finding errors we didn’t find 10-11 years ago, and *gasp and pearl-clutch* retconning a few things. I have my woes and increasing doubts about self-publishing, but the one massive benefit still remains: I get to change and fix things as I feel I need to. Creative control is a beautiful thing.

Currently, I’m about three-fourths finished with the final edits. Then I gotta put the whole thing together: Book 1, Book 2, and the “Rethana’s Tower” short story. I won’t be calling them “Books 1&2” in the text, but I’m considering revamping them as “Part 1: The Captive” and “Part 2: The Something I Don’t Know Yet Placeholder.” Or maybe I’ll just leave out the split and mush them both together the way they were originally. I suspect I’ll leave that decision until the last minute because I CAN. Boom.

I want to wrap up all interior text by November 30th so that on December 1st, I can turn my entire focus to painting the cover art. Yes, I am doing it myself, and yes, I am capable. It’s just that a painting of this type takes a metric feces-ton of work, and I won’t have enough time to fix things if something goes massively awry. Which let’s face it, tends to happen on a frequent basis in this universe.

And IF IF IF I can possibly manage it, I want to make a couple more maps to include in the book. Ideally — and this is the pipe dream — one of the new maps will be a comprehensive one of the entire Light-Walker universe during the era I’ve set most of the stories in. Keep in mind, I know nothing about mapmaking beyond what I’ve gleaned here and there by virtue of being obsessed with the fantasy genre for the past 35 years. Being an artist doesn’t hurt either. But I’m by no means a pro, and I really should hire someone to do this stuff.

Speaking of, I really need a cover artist, a mapmaker, a line editor, a copy editor, and a trade dress artist person, I forget what that’s called.

Anyway, I wanna hit “publish” on Rethana no later than December 31st. Preferably sooner than that because [see above paragraph about feces and universal hooplas].

In related news, UPCOMING PROJECTS.

As previously noted (I think, but I’m not gonna go back and check because you all know how to use a search function and I’m 45 and tired), as of this blogging I have five book-length Light-Walker works in at least 1st draft form: The Flight of Elfled unBlessed, Return of the Pelegrin, The Priestess Murders, Malefactors, and The Perset Pack.

As soon as the Rethana book is done and out the door, I plan to start getting Malefactors ready. Beta reader feedback has not been great: either I’ve gotten no response or I’ve gotten negative response. At least the negative feedback has given me something to work with so I can make changes. Plus, I haven’t looked at the text myself in at least a year, so I’ll be coming to it with fresher eyes and will find plenty to revise and rewrite, damn my eyes.

I want to do Malefactors first, because it kind of feels like a cloud of doom hanging over my head. It contains some very dark stories, so it’s not just the unpleasant/nonexistent beta feedback getting me down about it. I love my malefactors, but they’re not exactly happy folk to keep in the forefront of my head and I would like them out of my house.

After Malefactors, I want to release into the wild either Elfled or Priestess Murders. Probably Elfled, as that one’s much closer to being ready. It’s also been around the longest, and I adore Elfled with all my heart, and she deserves to get dusted off and sent out to play. She’s perky and plucky, she’ll be fine.

I’m thinking Mals and Elfled should keep me busy for the first half of 2023. After that, I plan to focus on something I never thought I’d do: penning a complete guide to my Light-Walkers universe.

In going over Rethana’s story and retconning things here and there, I discovered that I’d forgotten a lot about her particular section of the world. Flora, fauna, dialects, architecture, geography…. I had a lot of it stored in my head, but inevitably bits and bobs had gone missing. I had to hunt up notes I made 20 years ago. I x-refd with other novels, published and un-. I peered at and pored over hastily scribbled maps and gained confirmation that it’s probably time for bifocals.

The crux of it is that over the past two months, I’ve spent a lot of time foraging for deets, time I could’ve spent working on the actual book. I don’t wanna hafta do that again. Hence the brainworm of putting it all together in one coherent, gargantuan, easy-to-refer-to doorstop. Which will probably never make its way out into the galaxy unless it executes a jailbreak and makes a mad dash across No-Book’s-Land.

So. Rethana’s omnibus (not the title), Malefactors, Elfled, and Complete Guide. Voy-oh-lay.

Also, I want to blog more.

/ Courtney / Writing

writing update

A BRIEF UPDATE

Remember that shiny sparkly new story I did prewriting for last week? Well, that turned into writing a shiny sparkly new story. The working title is THE PERSET PACK, in which “perset” means “breakfast.” Set in my Light-Walkers universe, the story is: THE BREAKFAST CLUB (minus the misogyny and homophobia of that exemplar of ’80s teensploitation) meets Lev Grossman’s THE MAGICIANS. And I’m telling the story from the POV of a weird girl named Anlon, my version of Ally Sheedy’s Allison Reynolds.

And there you have it. I’ve written about 10,000 words so far, and I am having a BLAST.