Last time, I mentioned that I had dusted off an old story I wrote many years ago in the high fantasy genre, and was in the process of going through it to see if it could be salvaged for a “smoothing” rewrite. After doing so, I have arrived at the decision that I will not pursue it…at least not right now. And the reason is fairly simple:

This story (called The Kingmaker from Badrin Falls) is, in fact, something of a spin-off of a much larger work that I had never completed. That much larger work was a six volume fantasy epic; restlessness and distractions caused my work to peter off in the early stages of the fourth book. I realized when reviewing the Kingmaker material that if I wanted to pursue it, I would first need to reconcile issues with that unfinished opus. Not issues with stilted prose or sloppy storytelling or anything like that. No, the issue is that thanks to a certain (similarly unfinished) chef-d’œuvre by George R. R. Martin–and the hugely popular television series adaptation–it is impossible to hope anyone would overlook the elephant in the room: certain elements in my world and story are not merely stale in comparison, but reek of derivative nigh-plagiarism. (I assure you, this was not intentional; I developed the world/plotline almost twenty years ago, before I ever picked up Martin’s books and long before the show premiered.)

Example: my books featured a kingdom whose northern border separates its people from a wintry, forested land of savage clans. No, there was no “wall” doing the separating; instead, it was a huge sloping escarpment stretching from sea to sea covered in spike traps, pitfalls, earthen machicolations, and the like. Nevertheless, the whole thing is WAY too similar to what was created in A Song of Ice and Fire, so it would need to be revised or removed entirely. That is just one of several instances where I simply could not proceed without reducing myself to Sword of Shannara-level hackneyed imitation. (Not claiming that everything else is purely original, but I could name a dark-hearted warlock Boralis, and very few would catch on to that “steal,” but if I named a master swordsman Luncelot or an honorable smuggler Daros, no one would let me get away with that–being assimilated so thoroughly in pop culture have rendered details like these untouchable without risking integrity wounds.)

The putrid scent of these problematic plotpoints and geographical details rarely waft their way into Kingmaker; the scale and breadth of its story stays focused on a small segment of its world and politics, and since it follows a lowborn character rather than a monarch or general, little of that world and those politics is ever even mentioned. However, if you’re going to “go for it,” you have to “go all the way.” I don’t want to trap myself into not being able to explore that world further afterward. Therefore, I must first re-shape everything pretty much from the ground up. And that is a truly daunting task. One that will take a lot of time. Which is not to say I’m unwilling to invest that time. But when it comes to daunting tasks and devotions of time, at this very moment, I’m a bit more eager to first tackle the sci-fi epic I mentioned in a previous post than this fantasy one.

So, I’m setting aside Kingmaker for now and will focus more on outer space adventure, alien plagues, waygates, militant colonists, interplanetary warfare, deserters and archivists and assassins, oh my. I’m developing all that when time and passion allows, but I do have at least a couple more things to knock out first. A short story before the end of the month and my final Hopeless Harry story, already partially written. Not to mention Godlight Quakes the Electric Sky–no, I haven’t forgotten about that. Plate so full, jeeeeez.

Anyway–more to come, beginning with that shorty (Remnant). See you then.