Afterward:

“Perhaps we will meet again somehow, in a different time and place…

Please, promise me that you will love me again, someday.”

This is my second novel, after a teen romance entitled Loveland. It was long and winding and frustrating and disorienting and, ultimately, probably the hardest thing I’ve ever done. But I loved it, no longer would I say “I want to be a novelist one day”, suddenly I was a novelist, albeit an unpublished one.

I knew immediately that I wanted to write another National Novel Writing Month novel, which is what you have just finished reading. Although I gave it my best shot, I'm definitely less attached to Ex Nihilo than Loveland. I'm reminded of the concept of “beginner's luck,” somehow your second attempt at something always feels like your worst.

Perhaps part of the reason I'm less attached is that, although Loveland was assembled over scraps of almost three years, Ex Nihilo represents barely 6 months of my life, originating barely seven months ago, a little something I wrote on the back of a school handout. It was the scene where Puzzle first meets Epiphany, although neither of them had their names at that point (although Puzzle’s real name was already Roselyn). Later, during the summer vacation, I became somewhat ensorcelled with this idea, although every attempt I made at it I was unsatisfied with. I shelved the whole project, nestled away on my laptop... the one that died inexplicably about 8 months ago (as I'm writing this) taking with it everything I had saved on my hard drive.

But I digress. I had decided by the beginning of October 2008 that I wanted to write something that was distinctly not Loveland, and I began juggling around three ideas: Final Judgment, a post apocalyptic sci-fi/fantasy; Myr: A Final Rose, a dark, school fantasy; and Love Me Again Someday, that weird novel I never seemed to be able to pull off correctly. As a fun side note, the first chapter of Myr should be up a week from today (Wednesday) and I hope to serialize to its conclusion, which will be the first non-NaNoWriMo novel. I'd be happy if you tried it out.

Just as Loveland was, at its core, a novel about my thoughts on romantic relationships, I knew from the beginning Ex Nihilo was to be about philosophy. In fact, during the turbulent November rush I billed it to pretty much anyone who would listen as a “existentialist superhero novel”.

Somewhere in the middle of October (who knows why) I also decided it would be a great idea to go with the draft of notes (which I had of course lost) in which there was a character for every Major Arcana. What’s more, I decided to give them all two additional names, unique powers, screen time, and fully written out back stories (many of which I only hint at over the course of the novel).

In the end, Ex Nihilo was a lot easier to write, probably a conjunction of the huge amount of material I was trying to cover (100 years, 22 superheroes, and several pages worth of spiritual, philosophical, and historical research) and the fact I’d already written a novel before. Unfortunately, I feel that this overabundance caused the book to be fairly scattered; probably it would be more appropriate to write Ex Nihilo as a series rather than a single novel. I also think my characterization was a little less crisp this time around, I think most of the Loveland cast seem significantly more real than Ex Nihilo’s.

I mentioned it briefly before, but I’d like to further outline my philosophical message. I tried to make a story about the conflict of worldviews in modern society, without ever really stating that one was “better” than the others. Each of the Eternal represent a different major philosophy or, in some cases, a perversion of one of them.

I also had the ending, with Puzzle taking Mirror’s hand and the world ending, in my mind from the very beginning. I think that Apocalypse is a good ending for any existentialist novel because it is so deliberately finite. The reader is not left wondering “what happened next?” because that really was it.

I chose to make all the characters permanently children (they were already immortal by that point) because I think children have an otherworldliness about them that adults don’t possess. Also, I decided if I were Epiphany I think I would have picked kids because they disappear easier and are less socially-imprinted at that point. Also, being prepubescent meant that it prevented any of them from having children, which would have further muddled the enormous cast.

Ex Nihilo was inspired and is derivative of pretty much everything I’ve watched, read, or done in about the past three years. I think its major influences are The Stranger, Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman, Serial Experiments: Lain, Highlander (despite me not really being a fan), and of course my experiences with Loveland.

I would like to end by saying thank you to anybody who has read this far and to everybody that put up with me this month while I got here (especially my parents, sister, and girlfriend), I know that I was distant and/or downright unfriendly at times.

What follows is something of a survey; I would absolutely love it if you would take a few minutes to answer the questions. Specifically, I would like to put an emphasis on the why of your answers, because single word or phrase answers don’t really help me much. Also, I would like to say I am very interested in finding editors/beta readers for this, if you are interested in my interest, please contact me for instructions/praise.

Who was your favorite character?

Who was your least favorite?

Which characters do you think I wrote best/worst?

What was your favorite & least favorite scene?

Which character relationship(s) was your favorite (any sort of relationship- friend, enemy, lover, etc)?

Do you feel any characters got too much or too little screen time for their plot potential?

What did you think about the ending? Do you think I pulled off my premise?

Which power would you most like to have? Same question but least.

Although it was not a romance novel, did you find yourself romantically pairing the characters? If so, which ones?

For those of you who have read Loveland; which did you prefer?

What did you think of the novel as a whole?

Do you have any lingering questions I could answer?

Do you have any additional comments?