It never occurred to me that I really haven’t formally announced any updates since the initial introduction of The Galarian Chronicles. Sitting here, putting together this first update right now….

….there really hasn’t been too much to update, for better or for worse.

A portion of the time I’ve devoted to the project has been mostly “sketching” out a majority of the first act in an official manner. I’ve had these stories in my head for ages, and I’ve never really sat down and jotted it all out, so I can read it and feel it out better. Between time I spent at work writing the first major portion out in bulletpoint form and some other time I spent writing out the character list, affiliation and all that good stuff, I haven’t done a ton of putting that ink to paper, so to speak. I’d say I have 60% or so of the entire first book “sketched out” overall, and overall about 90% of the entire story in my head.

Part of the lack of much to update has been due to some admitted mismanagement of time, some of it has been dealing with more health annoyances, some of it has been just playing games overall, mostly new releases. There’s also been some fine tuning on my Top 25 Games of All-Time series as well. I still feel like I can get this done before the end of 2019. It’s just a matter of putting the pieces together, driving the narrative forward and, most importantly of all, making the two main figures of the story (Galarian and Aeriann) as fully fleshed out, believable and likeable as possible. After all, this is The Galarian Chronicles I’m writing here! It’s a project that means the world to me, so to see it come to fruition is a goal I’ve longed for, since the mid 2000’s.

I’ve made a bit of a schedule that I am attempting to follow (again). I made this about two months ago, but things have come up and stymied any whole-hearted attempt at following through. Then again, someone did tell me that sometimes it’s best not to try to force things via schedules and let it come naturally. A few more doctors visits this month and I should get a better understanding as to whether I need time off work again or not, which may or may not slow the progress on this project (most of those doctors visits have been done).

Long story short – there should be a more steady workflow with The Galarian Chronicles once I get a better understanding of what’s going on with my crappy health at the end of the month (one quick update there – one issue has slowed down considerably). It’s so disheartening feeling so utterly miserable and just not feeling up to working on things you love to do.

In the meantime, I’m seriously considering using a lot more free time in November to challenge myself and do some writing, to kinda quasi-work off NaNoWriMo in my own kind of way and pace. I remember a few years ago getting 3k words done in a day, and then didn’t get anything else done for the rest of the month. November is also a super busy time, both at my job and with gaming releases fighting for my attention, so that’s going to be a major challenge.

There’s a couple of actual legitimate pieces I can call an update, I guess, I mean outside the aforementioned. The first is that the working title for Book I is currently slated as “The Musings from Redward Caves“. The most I’ll say about the current title for Book I is that there’s a good bit of play on words going on here. “A New Hope” was already taken by some weird space film from the late 70’s — never heard of it before a few weeks ago. All joking aside, A New Hope wouldn’t describe anything from The Galarian Chronicles. I kinda have another idea for a title that has retains the play on words involving Musings, but unless the feeling changes, or there’s another inspiration I can draw from that would fit as a title, The Musings from Redward Caves should be the title of the first book (first, last?)

In what might be an unusual move (maybe it’s not — I really haven’t talked to many folks who have written stories previously, or at least not at length), I am actually 65% complete with the final chapter of the first story. There was a couple of nights in a row where I wasn’t feeling so great — downright miserable really, and I channeled that energy into working out the ending, which is planned to be an emotionally charged piece of the book. What I have so far, IMO, is something that I feel people that read the book would never forget. That ending is supposed to be the launchpad of something larger than the first book, however if things don’t click, or I just don’t have it in me to go through with the massive project past the first book, it can possibly end there and then. It’ll be open ended just in case, so I don’t pigeonhole myself into any one extreme.

Well hey, that was kind of an update in this non-update update!

I’m hoping for at least one more update this year at minimum, and I’m hoping that update I provide you will be something significant. Until then, I’ll let the words of a wise, weird man linger about in my head (and less out the rear, well, I mean it’s still valid, but just not out the rear):