Starfall's Wish - Preface - First Draft (Patreon)

I am going to start posting the first draft chapters of my novel(s) from the Annals of Erthas setting, starting with the Preface where I lay out some important facts and motivations and such. This is going to drop alongside a secondary pre-story chapter and the first chapter.

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After nearly twenty-five years of practice and world-building, I have finally written a book! Though, it would be quite a fiction to say that I wrote the whole thing, because I did not. I initially started out to write a short story for National Novel Writing Month 2022 but I stalled at about 1,500 words a week in and directed my energy elsewhere.

But then, shortly after Christmas 2022, I stumbled upon an A.I. writing tool. While my first flirtations with using A.I. for writing were pretty unsuccessful, this particular tool had a feature that would, at my direction, generate two or three sections of two to three paragraphs each. Most of what it would return was unusable, but there were some good lines to be found. Slowly, I pieced together the parts that made sense and my 1,500 words became 17,000 after a week. The tool furthermore had a function to rewrite sections to be, for example, more descriptive or more intense (this setting was very helpful during the fight scenes and emotionally tense moments, though sometimes it gets a little out of hand).

So, really, I did not write this book whole book. I directed it and edited it and dragged it across the finish line, but the labor is not wholly mine. Of the tens of thousands of words in the story, roughly a quarter are mine, either as prompts or editings. As of the time of this writing, copyright with regard to A.I. generated work is in legal limbo and I'm not sure what all the fall-out of this will be, but to be honest, I'm not even worried. I'm not trying to make a living with this, and I really don't care if my copyright is revoked or infringed upon.

All that said because I am not a writer. Sure, I've written millions of words over the course of my time world-building and playing roleplaying games, not to mention for school and work, but I'm not a writer. I can write, but it's not my main joy, merely a means to an end.

My primary art is world-building and the world in which this book is set, Erthas, is mostly a linguistic exercise. I have modeled four language families and their histories and developments over at least 1,500 years, plus the effects of a divine superstrate, just to get to where this story begins. This story is largely a prequel to the main stories that I wanted to tell, but now, it has taken the spotlight as the opening act for the Annals of Erthas.

As for the world itself, it is a rather ambitious project seeking to combine the geographic breadth of Jordan's Wheel of Time, the linguistic depth of Tolkien's Legendarium, and the pulpy reading experience of Howard's Hyborean Age.

The stories set in this world will run across different genre, from high, heroic fantasy to dark, sword-and-sorcery. I am a fan of non-western story structures and literary devices and endeavor to use them. This particular story began as a Hero's Journey type tale but ended up using a four-part Kishōtenketsu structure that's found throughout Japanese literature, and from the way the story ended up going, I would absolutely label it horror, especially with the lack of agency that some of the characters experience until near the end, but I won't spoil it.

I had great joy in bringing this story to life and I hope you will enjoy it as well.