UPDATED AS OF NOVEMBER 23, 2009 11:17 PM EST

NEWS
Yeah, I'm pretty insecure. My biggest insecurity is that I'll be ripped off the same way I "ripped off" (as one particular fellow once mentioned) and find my story sitting unpublished in my computer and, at the same time, on a shelf at Waldenbooks without my name on it. It scares the hell out of me, even though I know I can prove my story belongs to me with nearly seven years worth of writings. Problem is that the story can't be retracted. All I would get was royalty pay or a settlement of my selling the creative rights. It happens, but there's nothing I can do. Well, almost nothing, since I just now realized I can trademark the plot, characters, and settings. I'm so paranoid and insecure, I might actually do that.

I have some updates to make, but I won't make tonight 'cause I'm tired. I got an e-mail which I dismissed as spam, but now I'm thinking it might have been that user taking me up on my offer to give a more informed critique. If it was, try again at torgoexecpowder@yahoo.com. I'm going now... hafta look up a walkthrough for Golden Sun, then sleepy... -_-zzz

OLD NEWS

Chapter 11 to The Dark Prince is finished, at last, but I'm disappointed with it. It was just too... I don't know, forced, I guess. The title, "Beginning's End", is what it is. So far, I consider everything written so far the beginning. Chapter 11 is the end of the story's beginning, but that doesn't mean it's half-way through, either. The middle I can see being half the size of the beginning, and the end being half the size of the middle (making for my story being... a fourth complete? No, wait, a third? Crap, I've been out of school too long, I can't do basic math anymore). I wanted Chapter 11 to be action packed and keep readers on the edge of their seat, and I wanted to be a bit edgy... the last scene in the chapter pretty much sums up how weird Carlawna's life is, and how well she rolls with the punches.

Chapter 12 will be my first short chapter either. I want it to at least breach a thousand words, but my philosophy is 5500 words is 1500 less than what I like. It will be in Necro's POV, for the most part with a little third-person omniscient (whatever the hell that means).

Chapter 13 will take place a month afterward (I think that will mean October) when Necro returns from his first session of daemon training with Valdez. I hate training scenes. The dry hump at establishing a growing character is setting them with a master showing him how to swing a sword. Look at Return of the Jedi! Suddenly Luke is just like the Jedi we saw in the first three movies rather than being rash and awkward, and we hardly saw any of the important changes in his life in the time between Empire Strikes Back and RotJ. Bottom line is: I hate training the characters. It's long. It's pointless. It's easier for them to just establish that they are training, and never ever mention the individual sessions that make the improvements. It's also cooler, like in RotJ, for the character to emerge from an undisclosed time of obscurity a powerful being to be reckoned with. I personally think training a character in the story is merely a story element for idealistic teenagers. I don't know. I'm old enough now I can blame everything on teenagers. Don't take it personally.

Saturday was the Day of the Necromancer, a holiday in my series celebrating the downfall of Phanatos the Great. It has become something more of a Christmas analog for my world, and in the spirit of the Day of the Necromancer I'm working on a new long-short story about Carlawna, and I'm calling it Troubled Girl for now. It chronicles her childhood from the point where Hohenheim takes her as an apprentice, to her long winding road of obscurity in adolescence up to where her and Hohenheim part ways after euthanizing the lich K'vad Achnob, and then will end shortly after her short-lived fling with Amos Mandate. It may clarify a few things about her mysterious character, especially because I still haven't justified her all-knowing nature in The Gathering Clouds. I feel like I've developed a stronger interest in Carlawna since I started writing Dark Prince, and now I want her character to be more edgy and erratic (as what I tried to do in Chapter 11).

RECOMMENDATIONS

COMPLETE (and my ratings from 1 to 10; 1 being worst.)

The Legend of Phanatos: The Gathering Clouds 10

The Fall of Tom Kfoukes 8

The Fall of Daemon Cirrus 7

Bridge Life 8

Urchins 4

Mac Vorennin 8

The Chasm: 2

In-Progress: (Ordered by most recently updated in the real world)

The Legend of Phanatos: The Dark Prince

Leslie Garlen (Doubts of completion in general)

Wrath, the Chimera (Doubts of completion in general)

Things to Know

LOP Canon means that the story is canon (of relating to the world of, if you dunno) to Legend of Phanatos. On that note--THE ITEMS OF THE GREAT NECROMANCER ARE NOT RUDDY HORCRUXES! Asus friggin' Christ! I've heard it over and over again, "Harry Potter already did this, and they were Horcruxes" I truly appreciate the reviews, but you know what I did when I got to the part where I read about Horcruxes? I shouted "Son of a WHORE! She ripped my ass off!" I put Phanatos' soul in those items long before she published Half-Blood Prince. I won't deny that she made them before me, but I didn't fashion the Battle Garb of Phanatos after the Horcruxes. Shit happens. I'll get over it, and I know that because she beat me to the punch, I'll have to stop sucking my thumb and get over it. I'm already working on ways to keep the Great Necromancer's item's relevant without them serving the same purpose as a Horcrux. They have to be relevant to the Gatherer's purposes, Phanatos' legacy, and Necro's honor. Thank's a lot, Rowling. I've actually reached a point in this story where I've loathed the plot more than my writing style, and I loved the plot until now! Again, that's only my fault. Baka, reviewer whose name I can't remember, writing group... your right. For all intents and purposes they are horcruxes. I'm working on it, though.

If you're not sci-fi buffs while reading anything I classify as Sci-fi, then vids and holos are-- respectively-- videos and holograms. To "palm" a door means to open it. I'm telling you things you don't need to know so that you can read this and say, "why the hell does he think I need or even want to know this?"

Thanks to free-use, I adapted the following quote from Star Trek: "We are the Borg,"

Much of the Vorennin universe was created by my genius uncle and his friend who, over a decade ago, intended for their work to be made a comic titled The Oaths Saga. Mac Vorennin and Leslie Garlen take place hundreds of years later in a universe almost unidentifiable as to what Terisha Vorennin grew up in due to all the political reforms and time traveling. Thus, I adapted the following from The Oaths Saga, which never held copyrights: Vorennin, Garlen, Thousand Worlds, Deter, Aesil, Terisha, Federation of Worlds, Shockgun.

I do have original ideas. I just steal them from somebody else and tweak them, just like what any good writer would do. Yes, I did type that with a sarcastic inflection. "Too real for fanfiction, too inspired for original fiction." and I like the way that sounds. Besides, if no ideas are original and are merely copies, then they all have the stand-alone complex. Yup, you guessed it--ripped that one off GiS SAC and 2nd GiG

Dirt and Bones

I call the fundamentals of writing "Dirt and Bones." I believe in rigorous practice of the fundamental elements of writing an enjoyable story. Therefore in a stroke of sincerity and selfish ulterior motives I made a forum to join the lot of the other hundreds unused forums. This forum, I hope and doubt at the same time, would be a place where questions about the fundamentals are asked and answered. Since I have a better chance of getting traffic by linking through my profile than letting it sit there for a year and I delete, I'll be linking through my profile like I just said in a long sentence that ends right now. This is Dirt and Bones