Multimedia Alchemist

Adwin, a fantasy novel

In these lands magic is forbidden and best forgotten. Those peoples who once wielded it have disappeared and those who would try to dabble in it are severely punished or killed. Magic has no place in the world, or so they have told us over and over through the centuries.

It is here in this twilight of magic and miracles that a thief seeking to make a name for himself crosses paths with a mysterious young woman. Neither they nor this world will ever be the same…

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If the above sounds intriguing, I invite you to read the first two chapters of ‘Adwin’.

You can find out more about the story and the novel writing process in my blog under the Adwin category.

 
World Map

A couple of my beta readers have requested to see a map. This is the working map I use when writing, however I wouldn’t say it is 100% fixed at this point. Don’t be too surprised if a city or two needs to up and move in the future.

A Book of Adwin

“Adwin” was originally conceived as a single novel, however over the years the story got so large that it seemed unlikely that a single book would be able to contain it all. When I made the decision to split the novel, the plot had already settled into three distinct acts which would become the three books of the trilogy. As the individual books do not yet have titles, I still tend to refer to the story as “Adwin” rather than the current unimaginative titles of “Book 1″, “Book 2″ and “Book 3″.

A Prolonged Writing Process

It’s somewhat embarassing to note that the earliest drafts and outlines in the ‘Adwin’ folder on my hard drive are dated 1994. While I take some small comfort in the fact that Tolkein took twenty years to write the Lord of the Rings trilogy, I am hardly Tolkein in my writing abilities and I don’t have a huge amount to show for so many years of gestation.

During these years I haven’t so much been writing single story at a glacial pace, but actually plotting and outlining and tossing out drafts when I feel they aren’t working. By my estimate, I have outlined at least four or five completely different versions of the plot that can all claim a toehold in the core ideas of the story. I would typically plot the entire novel and get above fifty or so pages in before realizing that it wasn’t working or that there was a much better way structurally to achieve what I was after. And from each failed attempt, I would pull the characters and the plot points that I liked from the previous draft and start again.

Slowly however, all my ideas began to solidify. The overarching story began settling into its final form in around 2000 and the current plot structure in around 2004. I believe I began writing the actual text of the current draft in around 2006 or 2007 with the bulk of it being written in just the last year or so.

What it ultimately comes down to is that I believe in this story. It has taken a long time, (particularly with juggling the demands of university, animation school and work during the intervening years), to figure out what this story is and the best way to tell it. In some ways I almost feel like I had to wait all these years to allow my writing skills to catch up with my vision. In any case, I have every intention to keep plugging away at it until it’s done.

Writing Resources

Below are a few of the books I’ve read and found useful in improving my craft. Hopefully I’ll be able to blog on some of these titles at some point in the future.