Felicitations, malefactors! A hearty welcome to this month's edition of the Archefire Newsletter, hastily scrawled in between cries for attention from the 3-month-old King of our little castle. Please forgive any typos and be assured that one subscriber always lets me know about them, usually within 5 minutes of sending the email out. (You know who you are.)
But yes, you read that correctly! Benny has reached the 3-month mark, and I've updated my Progress Bars to track a new project:
More on how amazing and surprising and incredible babies are later. For now, let's dive right into the meat of this newsletter while Big Ben is mystified by a YouTube video called "Music for Babies"! /* Praise the Lightmother it's smooth jazz and not Baby Shark on repeat. 🙏 */
Sibling Suns 3 Progress
This month was very productive, which is shocking considering I spend 75% of each day taking care of housework, a baby, and/or a mischievous Schnauzer! Subconsciously, I think I've been motivated by my upcoming return to work in less than two weeks. Gotta get as much written as I can before uprooting our current routine!
But I'm hoping that progress won't slow down much since I'll be riding the train into the city at least twice a week, giving me plenty of focus time to keep outlining. /* How the remaining days of the week go will depend on Rachel's gracious magnanimity. 😉 */
Now for what you all came for: CONCRETE STATISTICS. (No, no. Don't stand. Please hold your applause.)
The current word count for what I'm calling my Sibling Suns 3 planning documents is...
And that's with the outline only 27.5% complete. What can I say? I like planning!
To be fair, the percentage may be a bit misleading since it only accounts for the tasks that are completely finished, done and dusted. I'll break it down for you, so strap in: things are about to get really nerdy.
How I Outline, If You're Interested
I'm tackling the outline in three overlapping phases: 1) Targeted Worldbuilding, 2) Major Sequence Planning, 3) Character Arcs and Subplots.
Phase 1, Targeted Worldbuilding includes updates to my Sibling Suns World Bible for all the new places we'll be visiting in the third book. That's been about 14,000 words, and I finished back in early February.
The rest of the month was spent on Phase 2, Major Sequence Planning. Here, I'm laying out the big action set pieces so I can keep track of all the logistics and characters involved. This book has four of those, and the most complicated one was the first, which I finished planning in the last week of February. (Let me tell you: Sibling Suns 3 has an explosive start!)
Finally, Phase 3, Character Arcs and Subplots involves mapping out the story progression from the perspective of every character. Obviously, the main characters – Grim, Inac, Sentyx, etc. – get the most love here (love = word count). But I go through all the side characters too, ensuring they are dynamic and have a purpose in the story. A lot of times, this is where new characters are created, when I notice some important angle on the story is missing. Abyss take me, but the cast is somehow still growing in the conclusion of the trilogy.
/* Out of curiosity, what's your preference here? Do you like when new characters are introduced late in the game, or do you prefer to keep a tight cast from beginning to end? Leave a comment with your thoughts! */
So why is the official Progress Bar percentage misleading? Because while I've not formalized the character arcs and subplots in the Outline document, those elements obviously interact with the major sequences I'm planning. I've got plenty of informal notes and "must-haves" for each character that will serve as a strong foundation for Phase 3 once I finish all four sequences.
In other words, I know the character arcs. I just have to write them down.
/* Geez, why not just write the dang book then? I know, right? */
The end goal of this insane process is to have a clean outline with three high-level sections corresponding to the three Pillars of Storytelling that work best for me: Characters, Plot, and Setting. Each section is broken down into checklists of things to include (in chronological order) so I can easily decide what goes in each chapter as I draft.
If that's a little hard to picture, here's a spoiler-free sample to give you an idea:
Timeline
Alright, I'm sitting at 27.5% right now, so this may sound ambitious: the goal for the end of this month is to hit 50%. That means all of the major sequences will be planned and I'll be finalizing character arcs next month. I don't recall if I've said this publicly or just to Rachel in one of my baby-induced fugue states, but I'm aiming to complete the full outline by June 4th. Ideally, a few days earlier, because I've got to write up this year's Odyssey of JoshSE (the name is great, shut up), and that's always a crunch!
So that's it! I'll finish the outline before my 34th birthday. No sweat! Right? Right?
Website Development
You may have noticed a new feature image on my homepage. If you haven't, give that image above a little clicksy, and behold! A new landing page for Grave of the Waiting. I mentioned in last month's newsletter that I'm working on revamping the Books page yet again, and this is the first step. The Sibling Suns series will get its own landing page too, and then those pages can serve as the foundation for a more aesthetic Books page with some fun features.
For example, did you know that when you click Read Sample on the Grave landing page, it will open an inbuilt .epub reader right in your browser? Is this excessive? Yes, extremely. But not nearly as excessive as including the entire book in that sample. Read as much as you desire, my friends. I told you that book will always remain free in some form, and I'm keeping that promise. (You can also download it from the welcome page if you want your own copy.)
Unfortunately, these updated landing pages are only the first step of the website upgrade process. The next part, which I'm slowly struggling through, involves refactoring my code to eliminate technical debt. Egad!
You see, I began this website with an open-source template that's served me well for many moons. However, it's got a monolithic 3000+ line CSS file with probably 2500 lines of completely unused dead code. It's a huge waste of space that makes the site hard to maintain. I've got to take care of this ASAP, otherwise it'll be nigh impossible to develop new features as quickly as I want.
Think of it like clearing the foundation, making sure I've got solid ground to build on (much like the Sibling Suns 3 outline!). Once I've got that solid foundation, the goal will be to ship at least one update to the website each month. Expect a section in the newsletter dedicated to that. They might be sort of mundane at first, but once we get the ball rolling, I've got lots of entertaining ideas!
King Benjamin and Nazgul, Duke of Darkness
Let's be honest: the Lord of Darkness has been dethroned. Nazgul is now but a thrall to the real king of the house, King Baby. Benjamin the Hungry, First of His Name.
As we attend to the king's wishes, Nazgul pines for his former position of supremacy. He is helpless but to watch as we film videos of the new monarch, who has started giggling and interacting and calls for attention at all moments of wakefulness.
Pictures of the old ruler are rare these days. Often they are of a tired pup, collapsed after spending his days scheming (read: stealing shoes) and yearning for days of yore.
We ventured forth looking for new lands to conquer. But alas, the frozen tundra was too bitter for even his fur-clad skin to bear. We returned to King Baby's domain with tail tucked between legs. Mayhap as the days grow warm, there will be new opportunities to roam beyond the thralldom of Benjamin. Dreams of springtime fill his little doggy noggin.
That's it for this month! Nazgul may be getting the short end of the stick when it comes to Benny, but Rachel and I are continually amazed by the boy. Once again, seemingly overnight, more modules of his brain turned on. Suddenly he became interactive, paying attention to us when we talk to him, chatting back with baby speak, and giving us big smiles when we make silly noises. He's also holding his head up by himself! At the rate things are going, he'll be reading An Ocean of Others by the time he reaches one year! 😜
But lo, I hear the King beckoning. I must away! Until next time.
And as always, thanks for reading!
— Josh