A Project Wardens Update: August 22, 2022
Hey everyone! Nothing elaborate for this week’s blog. Just a simple update on the state of Project Wardens.
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As I alluded to in my previous blog post, I’ve been making some significant adjustments to the story that warrant a significant pushback in the anticipated release date. While my initial hope as of the conception of this website was to have a publication window of early 2023 for the project’s first book, the current forecast is for the first draft to be completed as early as mid-late May, with a proper completion timeframe looking more like the following Fall/Winter.
The biggest reason for this major delay is that I have effectively pushed the reset button on my Book 1 work. This past month, I have been taking a good, long look at my old outlines and building new ones from scratch in their place. Simply put, I was becoming so dissatisfied with the state of Wardens Book 1’s first draft that I would choose to put time into any of my other writing projects—even ideas for later Wardens books.
So, I made the decision to start fresh. I created one outline for general, series-spanning details, such as character and setting information and an updated timeline of events, and a specific outline looking at Book 1 on a chapter-by-chapter basis. This has given me a chance to really figure out my writing strengths and account for my weaknesses while replacing old, flawed ideas with new and improved ones. Revisions have been ongoing and are already proving beneficial regarding the structure of the book’s opening chapters. However, designing a satisfying middle for the story that effectively connects the characters’ start and end points has proven to be a consistent challenge.
While my ultimate goal is improving the story, my short-term goal is to improve my overall work cadence. While this website has allowed me to make sure that I am always writing, I also want to make sure that I am staying consistent with my book writing as well, and that means building an effective schedule for myself that finds the right balance between elbow room and efficiency.
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As for more specific details, I’ve got a few updates to share:
Vincent Irefel: Vincent remains mostly unchanged, having a generally stoic personality, but I’m hoping to spice up his relationships and interactions with other characters just a little so that it doesn’t feel like they are conversing with a sheet of iron. One little quirk that has developed is a general distaste for metaphors and heat-of-battle banter. There have also been some pretty dramatic additions to his backstory, though I would prefer my readers to discover those organically.
Liam: Liam’s overall goal remains intact (as well as a key part of Wardens Book 1’s story), but I wanted to greatly expand the role that Liam plays in a way that appropriately matches his role as a main character. Between him and Vincent, I would say that the latter is Wardens’s real star, but Liam’s story is what ultimately drives both his character arc and Wardens’s entire narrative forward.
The Ornan Covenant: Despite how important they are to nearly every facet of Wardens’s overall story, they had a rather tepid presence in the events of the book. Thanks to the changes to the story that have been made thus far, they now appear much sooner and more often, going from showing up for just a few chapters and remaining in the background for the rest of the book to having several Ornan characters being promoted to deuteragonists. It’s these changes in particular that have managed to jumpstart my enthusiasm for this Project and help me once again realize that writing, like any art, is a process in which one never stops improving.
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Before I close out, I wanted to make light of at least one very significant, blog-worthy development: an official working title for the series.
Heritors of Ruin.
Among the most integral themes at Project Wardens’s core is the idea and influence of the legacy, not only on the world around us, but also ourselves. Characters like Vincent see their legacy as one of failure and ultimately exile, while a fresh, upwards-looking pair of eyes like Liam’s recognize his a the legacy of the Champion. Then you have the legacy of the entire Western Anarchies itself, a land once full of prosperity laid low by disaster from the actions of a people who only now have found it proper to return to the mess they left behind.
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That’s all I have for now. If you’re interested in learning more about Project Wardens, feel free to search through my selection of Writer’s Wall blog posts and look for blogs marked under the “Project Wardens” category. In the meantime, thank you, dear reader, for your incredible patience, and I hope you’ll keep looking forward to continued updates on Project Wardens and the rest of my portfolio.
Until next time!