Auserv: Toa-Kal of Emotion

If you read What If?, you've probably noticed that my update schedule is grievously slipping. While I promise weekly updates, it's been more like monthly updates. This is because I bit off more than I could chew and started What If? during the summer, thinking I could keep up a chapter a week. As soon as I went back to school the September after the book started (I'm homeschooled, as I've mentioned before in this blog, but I'm taking classes at the local community college), it slowed down. By December the semester was over and I sped up a bit, but now the next semester has begun. In addition, I've recently been having a series of minor family crises, along with extracurricular things, and of course, sometimes even when I can be writing, I'm too stressed or uninspired to put any words on the page. I try not to force myself to write if I'm not feeling up to it, because I've noticed that when I didn't feel like writing at the time I wrote some scene, it's evident in the bland narration and dialogue and lack of anything interesting happening. Still, Book 7 is a 20-chapter book like most of the others in the series, and it started in late July, so it should have been finished by the start of December. It's inexcusable to only be on Chapter Fourteen when the book started 37 weeks ago. It's already gotten to the point where I will have to delay the start of Book 8. And like I mentioned in my last blog entry, I want the series to be finished by the end of next year. As of this writing, there are 90 weeks until the end of next year, and 60 of them must be used on Book 8, 9 and 10. The remaining 30 are obviously for the intermissions between books. Normally I give myself 8 weeks between books, so if we assume 8 weeks between Book 8 and 9 and 8 weeks between Book 9 and 10, that means I have 14 weeks to work with before I start Book 8. I could safely drag Book 7 out to mid-July and still finish on time. Obviously, I don't want to do that. However, expecting myself to write the remaining 6 chapters in 6 weeks is too much right now. Being realistic, I expect it to take at least 10 weeks. During school, it can take me almost 3 weeks to write a chapter (obviously depending on the length of the chapter, which varies from around 3000-8000 words), but when I'm off school I can occasionally manage one chapter a week. I seriously doubt that the rest of the book will take more than 14 weeks, especially considering there are only 5 weeks left in the semester, but if it does, I will simply have to shorten the other intermissions. Either way, there will be no intermission between Book 7 and 8. Because of these severe delays, Book 8 will start after Book 7 with no more than a single week of a break. This is well enough, because Book 8 picks up directly after Book 7 ends (I obviously haven't written Book 7's epilogue yet, but depending on if I can make it work as an ending, Book 8's first chapter might literally begin only seconds after the ending of Book 7). This segues into the next part of my plan: writing ahead. When I started this series, I was updating three times a week. This was because I had written all of Book 1 before I began to post it. If I had done this with subsequent books, we might be seeing nearly year-long breaks between books. Because the books were so short at first (Book 1 was only about 70,000 words - for comparison, Book 7 had hit that mark by Chapter Eleven), I decided I would write them as I posted them. With Book 2, it worked out okay - I stayed ahead of my update schedule until almost the end. As I got more busy though, that became increasingly difficult and with Book 7 I was practically behind the update schedule before the end of the first month of the book. To mitigate this effect, I'm writing Book 8 before I even finish Book 7. I'm already behind my intended schedule (I wanted to be finished Chapter 5 by now, but I'm only on Chapter 3), but since this is my final year of high school and I shouldn't have a very busy summer, I am hopeful (though not at all making any guarantees) to finish writing Book 8 by September, when I will start college full-time (as opposed to part-time as it is now). Whenever it finishes being posted really depends on when I finish Book 7, but I'm more concerned about staying ahead of my update schedule than I am about the update schedule itself. It may seem counter-intuitive to be writing two books at the same time. Wouldn't that just make both of them go more slowly? Yes, really, it does, but I've already basically given up on finishing Book 7 with any amount of regularity to my update schedule by now. Please just bear with me until I finish Book 7. As long as I finish it within the next 14 weeks, I'm still on schedule. I am really hoping to finish it before then, so I can have Book 8 written by the end of summer, but I can only write as fast as my circumstances will allow. By no means have I given up on the series - I will finish it out as long as I'm physically able to do so. Whether I will finish it by the end of 2012, and whether I will manage to provide any regularity to my updates from here on out, I can only make promises, but with this much work put into it, my own death (or losing my arms or something like that ) is all that's going to stop me from finishing. Again, I'm really sorry that I've been unable to hold to my promises regarding the update schedule. I've always prided myself on having a story where you could count on there being an update, even if it might be a few days late - not like the multitude of excellent fan fiction I've read only to find that the author has given up or isn't serious about updating regularly. But I've fallen into that myself now. Serves me right to make such steep promises, I suppose. But rest assured, any readers I still have - I am still here, still writing, and doing the best I can to keep putting out updates.

So because of huge delays, Book 7 (which should have been done a month or two ago and instead could possibly take into March to complete) isn't done yet, but I have set my schedule for the remaining three books of the series, and regardless of when What If? finishes, Book 8 will be launched on April 18, 2011. I will begin writing it in about two weeks, so the beginning of Book 8 and the ending of Book 7 will be written alongside each other. That's probably a recipe for disaster, where I'll be forcing myself to write a chapter and a half of stuff every week until Book 7 is finished, but I'm set on sticking to my schedule with no more delays if at all possible, and I want to have a safe cushion of chapters already written when I start Book 8. At this point, the only thing that could stop Book 8 from being posted then is if Book 7 somehow takes longer than that to finish, since I won't have them running concurrently. That would just make the break between Book 8 and 9 shorter though; there's plenty of built-in time to still finish the series by the end of 2012 (which is what I'm planning for). Book 8's preliminary title is Six Voices in Harmony. Despite Book 7's first-person style, Book 8 will be returning to form with a third-person omniscient narrator. There will be two plots in the first part which come together in the middle: The first plot will show the gods at the beginning of time, chronicling the creation of the universe and what really happened between Koenori and the others, since we have heard conflicting stories from different characters about whether Koenori is the hero or the villain. The answer may be a bit less clear-cut than it would seem. The second plot will pick up right where Book 7 will leave off, with only a few timelines separating Guutana and his friends from their goal - Harmonization of all timelines. Actually, going into any detail about how the two plots will intersect will spoil a few upcoming plot details of Book 7, so I'll leave that for the Book 8 preview whenever Book 7 finishes. In other news: I am toying with the idea of doing a reboot/rebuild trilogy after the ending of the series. It would be at my own leisure so updates would be infrequent, and if my life just gets too busy I could possibly drop the project early, but I don't really want to stop writing for BZP when the series finishes, nor do I want all of my characters just sort of die off from my consciousness when their story is finished. I have already made somewhat detailed plans for this trilogy, but the question is, come 2013 when the series is over and I'm a full-time college student, will I still feel up to writing three more books? That's something we'll have to wait and see in two years. That's why I'm not officially announcing that this will happen, just throwing it out there that it might. This rebuild trilogy (I hesitate to call it a reboot since that implies that I'm just telling the story again, but better somehow - rather, this is a separate continuity with the same characters and settings, but an entirely new plot, so I'm calling it a "rebuild") would be called "The Storm Trilogy", with each book named after a different type of storm (Hurricane, Blizzard, and Thunderstorm would be the titles of the individual books). In the Dairuno Toa series, storm motifs have always been associated with the character Auserv, and this trilogy will take a greater focus on him, as he will be a main character from beginning to end. I am aiming, with this "Storm Trilogy", to tell a new version of my series that is completely accessible to new readers but still exciting for old readers, and I'm also aiming for something that will fit within the established Bionicle canon (so the supernatural elements - the gods, the Dying Breath, Tinporu, the Chosen Three, the Dairuno Stones, etc. are all out). The books will go in chronological order and cover the same story arcs as Books 1-6, but in entirely re-imagined ways. For example, Hurricane would open with a similar scene to A Strike of Lightning's opening scene, but quickly take a turn for a story more resembling Story of the Dead, only with Auserv and his team fighting alongside Onathei, Feyain and Gyotaren, eventually ending with those teams running into Rakdan and following him to Tonryak for the Storm Trilogy's version of The Minister of Destruction. Blizzard would be closer to The Tables Have Turned, To Be A Hero and In The Dying Breath, but with Auserv (and what's still left of his team by then) being part of the main cast from the beginning, and obviously with largely different reasons for the heroes to be going to Dyteeli and fighting Sihnozu, given that Dairuno and the Dairuno Stones won't exist in this version of the continuity. Finally, Thunderstorm would be entirely new material, tying up the stories of all the characters from the first two books, featuring new adventures of Auserv's, and ending somewhere around the short story Honey. In other words, all the same plot (and then some) will be covered, but in different ways. Also, obviously, each book would be much longer than the average book of the series, since they're effectively covering three books worth of story per book. Probably the trilogy would take 3-5 years to write, depending on how fast or slow I write them (and obviously depending on whether or not I decide to finish it or drop it early). This is an exciting idea for me because I can explore relationships between characters who never would have met, and I can freely do whatever to whoever even during what was, for this series, flashback story, because the plot doesn't have to be related. For example, maybe in this continuity Onathei will die early on and Barnoka will survive to the end - I can do whatever I want along those lines so it won't just be the same thing all over again. Anyway, back to writing Book 7 for now...

A couple last-minute decisions... 245: With the amendments, I'm okay with this. Aye. 247: Having considered Ausar's reasoning on this, I will approve it. Aye.

261: Aye... I've never been a fan of adding planets that can't logically be related to the rest of the Bionicle story, but if Vahkuax wants to do a story set on this planet, I'll approve the idea. 262: Aye, good idea. 263: Aye; like dotCARBON I'm sort of ambivalent to this one, because it cheapens the sheer alienness and fun of the early parts of the Toa Inika's story, but I won't say Nay. 264: Aye; again I'm not really fond of the idea but I don't have a good reason to say Nay beyond personal preference. 265: Aye, pretty interesting idea and would work well for a plot device. 266: I'm not sure how any society could possibly hope to survive something like this, or how it could ever be kept limited to one dome, but since it's obviously going to play a big role in Zorrakh's writing, Aye. 267: Aye; yet again I am somewhat unsure on this one but mostly because of personal preference.

253: Aye, no problem with the name. 254: Aye, no problem with this. 255: Aye, no problem with this. 256: Going to have to say Nay, just because of the name. It would be like naming a Bionicle organization The Freemasons or The League of Nations; the Illuminati were a real-life organization that existed at one point in time. However, I have no problem with the concept itself, so I will change my vote if the society can be given another name. I understand that's kind of a major upheaval especially if the epic is already written, but I can't approve of the name for a Bionicle organization. 257: Aye, I don't have a problem with this if, as Koji says, it is properly explained in the epic how it was possible for an organization without powers to do this. 258: Aye, this is a pretty cool idea. 259: Aye, no problem with this. 260: I love the idea of a Toa of Fungi. Aye. While I must agree with dotCARBON that it is uncomfortably close to overlapping with a Toa of the Green's power, I think because fungi are not actually plants but their own separate type of lifeform, it's passable.

245: Undecided. From the somewhat vague description, this sounds too powerful to not be a Legendary mask, which should have side-effects to breaking it and shouldn't have a wearer. I will consider changing my vote if we could specify exactly how it makes things chaotic (like, does it confuse people, cause natural disasters, etc. - I want to know what the limit of its power is), and preferably if we could also have the curse be just a side-effect of using the mask (the "bad luck" is transferred to the wearer as well as the target) rather than an actual act of self-defense on the mask's part, which would imply it is sentient. 246: Aye, but I would prefer if we could say it is a very rare Kanohi, because if these are easily accessible, it raises a big plot hole in the 2004-2005 story: if this mask is at all common, the whole "planting the wrong destined Toa team in the stars" subplot now makes Teridax and Lhikan look dumb because either just could have used this mask (both would have had good reason to be cautious about who got the Toa stones) and seen through Mata Nui's trick. I'm totally fine with the idea of it being a rare mask that only organizations like the Order or a few powerful individuals had access to. 247: Undecided. It's similar to the canon Kanohi Matatu as well as Ballom's Kanohi Dayku, but it isn't quite identical to either. However, I'm not sure if it's really different enough to qualify for a separate Kanohi. Maybe we could find some way to differentiate a bit more? 248: Aye, pretty cool idea. 249: Aye, good idea. 250: Aye, though the Great version never wearing off after just ten seconds of concentration seems a bit overpowered. 251: I'm kind of adverse to having Matoran words that sound too obviously like an English synonym to their translation but Aye, I suppose. 252: Aye; it doesn't really make sense why any language would use the same word to refer to two individuals primarily defined by their glaring difference in authority, but I'm assuming it has some relevance in one of Koji's stories.

1b: Aye. 32b and 34c: Aye. 145a: Aye. 240-241: Aye, welcome to the group. 242: Aye, I'm a bit wary of it but I guess it does no significant damage to canon. 243: Aye, nothing wrong with nailing down some specifics. 244: Interesting idea, though a bit awkward (can't really imagine Matoran carrying handguns ) - Aye.