Hello, everyone.
This’ll be a fairly short update on what I’ve been up to, since I had a couple pretty pair of posts just a few weeks ago. My End of the Year Retrospective covers a lot of what I’d be talking about for a monthly update, but I wanted to get into a bit more detail on some of the things I think readers might be interested in hearing.
Arcane Ascension 5 Updates
The first draft of Arcane Ascension 5 is at about 65-70% completion and going pretty smoothly. I’ve had a couple points where I’ve decided to deviate from the original plan significantly, largely to give readers more answers.
The trickiest part of this is executing those earlier reveals in a way that feels satisfying, rather than just having someone hand the main characters the relevant information. There’s going to be a mixture of different styles of reveals in this book (and future ones) through a variety of sources — Corin figuring things out on his own from putting together clues from different sources, direct conversations, watching memory crystals, reading books, etc. — and it’ll be interesting to see how readers respond to these.
My feeling is that there are going to be some scenes that feel a little too info dumpy in terms of characters just answering questions that Corin has, but on the other hand, I think Corin (and the readers) have earned some of those answers, and cutting “ask someone who knows the answers” out of Corin’s options also doesn’t feel reasonable. It’s also the most logical way to relate certain story bits, especially since much of this story takes place in a political setting where characters are going to be making deals and trying to figure out the best angles to handle things like alliances, etc. (Don’t worry, this is still a Corin book, and he’s not going to be spending his whole book politicking. We can leave a lot of that to Sera.)
Anyway, it’s going to be a fine balance trying to make sure some of those conversations don’t feel too expository. Where I land is definitely going to be subjective and vary from reader to reader, but I’m hoping to make these kinds of “lore conversations” more engaging or feel rewarding, rather than just like info dumps. We’ll see if that actually works out in practice.
There are a couple things the last two books haven’t focused on as much that I’m skewing toward more in this book.
First, enchanting. Some of this is going to be a direct extension of Corin’s major invention from AA4 (if you’ve read it, you probably know what I mean), some of it is going to be playing with what he was focusing on in AA3 and used for his duel in AA4, and some of it is going to be much more conventional AA1&2 style invention and enchantment. I know some people have missed Corin just making items, and while he did make some in both AA3 and AA4, they didn’t feel quite as plot or progression significant as the mana watch or Bright Reflection (with the possible exception of the thing he makes toward the end of AA4, which is huge, but hasn’t had much focus yet).
So, expect a lot of enchanting. Possibly too much for some readers, if I’m being honest, but I think we’re due for that — this should have a lot of payoff for things I’ve been setting up since AA1, and in particular, payoff for things that were supposed to be important in AA3, but not quite clear enough to many readers.
Aside from that, the second big focus is going to be on clear and direct power progression. Corin and co. are going to be working on getting stronger a bit more rapidly in this book, with means I won’t elaborate on. My hope is that this focus helps the people who are there specifically for a “Corin gets stronger” style of story to feel like they’re getting their payoff.
Finally, we’re getting back into more dungeon crawling in this book. I can’t say exactly how much of it, but there was practically nothing that I’d consider dungeon crawling in AA4, and AA3’s style of dungeon crawling was generally more casual and didn’t feel as lethal as AA1&2. This is going to be more like AA1&2’s dungeon crawling segments, but with some elements of the style of AA3’s more unusual dungeon encounters (e.g. things that feel more like “scenario floors”, but with some more classic dungeon rooms as well).
There still won’t be a massive amount of dungeon crawling in this one — that’ll be AA6, which will, as currently planned, be the most dungeon-heavy book I’ve written. This is a stepping stone into that direction.
All in all, I’m generally happy with how the book is going. I think the readers who have been missing enchanting and progression are going to like that. I do think some readers are going to find that there’s too much talking for their tastes in this one, but I’m hoping that there’s still enough action to keep those fans engaged, and that it gets them hyped about a more action-heavy AA6.
The Lost Edge 2
This is my current secondary project, but I’ve only spent a couple days on it this month. It’s worth mentioning that I think that the pacing of this book is going to be much more enjoyable for most readers, with a style that feels like the end of Edge of the Woods from the very start of the sequel. It’s possible I should have started out more like this in the first book, as I mentioned in the retrospective, but hopefully people who found the first book slow will still be interested in jumping into this one and be pleasantly surprised.
This isn’t to say that I’ve stopped having character-focused scenes or magic theory scenes, they’re just going to be interspersed throughout the story more, rather than front-loaded.
Another thing I’m doing differently is the Interludes. A number of people seemed more interested in the Interludes than the main story in EoTW, which is interesting, since they’re closer to the general style of the War of Broken Mirrors, but with my more recent storytelling flavor. I’m going to do more with the interludes in this book, including some Interludes from perspectives other than Scribe, and we’ll see how people respond to that. There are a couple of them that I’m particularly excited to write, including one that is probably my favorite concept for an Interlude in any of my books so far.
If people end up really digging the third-person narrative style more than Edge’s narration, I may skew toward just doing a new third person series on this continent after wrapping up Edge’s initial story arc. We’ll see how readers respond to both sides of this book.
AA Tabletop
I’ve made some good progress on the tabletop game this month, including finishing up my first draft on the Attunements section, which was one of my biggest pain points over the last couple years.
Attunements are complicated. The chapter on Attunements currently only covers the eight Valian attunements, and it’s novella-length on its own.
Something I’m needing to seriously consider is whether or not I want to try to push a bunch of extra attunements in here, as well as things like all the dominions. There’s a part of me that wants to include everything I possibly can so that fans can just have the single book and be ready to go with whatever they want, but realistically, I’m about 131,000 words in, and the book would probably be three times that length if I wanted to include all the dominions, attunements, etc.
At this point, my leaning is toward keeping the book to a more reasonable scope and providing guidelines for using attunements and dominions that aren’t listed, but not trying to put every single thing in the first book. Then, if there’s enough interest, I can release more books in the future.
This is probably the right route toward actually releasing something in a reasonable time frame, but I know it’ll disappoint some fans if they can’t read the book and pick out their favorite attunement or dominion, so it’s a tough call. I haven’t settled on anything just yet.
Aside from figuring out which things like attunements to include, I’m also considering whether or not to include things from continents like Dania (from The Lost Edge) in the same book, or to split those off into a separate book. I have a fair bit of Dania’s stuff written already, since I’m currently running a tabletop on that continent for friends, but it’s complicated, and it may be the kind of complicated that it makes it harder for readers to understand the core game if they get too tangled up in it when trying to learn about how to run something completely unrelated. So, there’s an argument that I should cut that content out and release it as an expansion book, but I’m not settled on that. (Similarly, I could theoretically cut Mythralis out and release it separately, but that’s less likely, since that content is a little more closely related.)
A lot of this will probably come down to impressions from beta testers outside of my own main tabletop group, but that’s still a good way off, since I probably won’t do anything with that until after AA5 is done.
Other Updates
I’m still negotiating for some side projects. One of the big ones fell through, which is hugely disappointing, but I still have some other things in the works.
Weapons & Wielders 4 is still planned, and I’ve done some initial work on it, but it’s probably mostly a next year thing. I may end up getting back to it right after EoTW2, but I don’t know. I may just jump straight into AA6 after EoTW2 or even right after AA5 — I want to focus on wrapping up AA, since a lot of people want closure.
For that reason, I also don’t plan to work significantly on Carefully Worded Wishes, the direct sequel to WoBM, or any other new stories for a while. I might do some more pre-writing or planning, but not a lot, unless it’s necessary for one of my side deals.
In terms of projects by other authors, no major updates there. Kayleigh is still working on SL3. I may have some other deals to announce later this year, but I’m not sure yet.
Hope everyone is having a good year so far,
-Andrew
Andrew Rowe 