ASSUMING DIRECT CONTROL

Well these past two weeks have proven to be far more busy than I had anticipated, yet I have very little to show for it Vinland-wise. Because this would make a very boring blog post, I am going to focus more on the exploits of Pendor this week, and I hope you find it as interesting as the usual book-related stuff.

First I’ll give you a little update on Vinland, at the moment I am hashing out the various characters and their interactions with the rest of the cast. This is all quite classified, so I cannot really show you much of what has been happening. Once that is done, my intention is to draw up a timeline of events, including all the problems and challenges which the characters are due to face (the trials and tribulations are after all what makes a book interesting!) from there I can then get back to writing, and will be able to tell you more about Vinland again.

As you know I am the lead designer for Prophesy of Pendor, and I find a lot of my time is diverted to that. Because of the new time constraints, I am going to move the blog entries to only twice a week. One will be published on Tuesdays, and one on Thursdays. This week has been more about Pendor so the majority of this update will be focused on that.

I love my work there, but lately it has been testing the limits of my management skill. For example I recently promoted one of the programmers to the Lead position, however two days later he dropped off the face of the earth. Whether something has happened to him, or he found the new role overwhelming, I simply do not know. This is one of the problems facing virtual teams – you do not know the people with whom you work personally, and if they do not reply to emails there is little that you can do.

Never the less, this left the programming team without direction so I decided to take the plunge and become more hands on with what they do.  This began with an email to the team telling them the situation, and then setting a number of tasks for them to do. As my mentor once said, “Align then raise.  Validate then suggest.” Oddly this is not one of the things they taught us at Brighton, so I am grateful for that advice. Now the plan is to have a working alpha version in place so that we can try out the various factions we have introduced, and get a feel of the world. From here we will be able to add in the features that the design team have been discussing.

Speaking of the design team, we have settled on releasing a preview for Pendor 4, every two weeks and this week was one of those weeks. You can find the latest here : PoP4 Preview. Even if Mount and Blade is not really your interest, you can see quite a bit about how we develop the various factions in that post. First you have the lore (the dialogue between a Knight of the Radiant Heart and the Mercenary Commander), followed by some of the concept art. It then goes to explain in more detail about the faction, and because this is primarily a combat game, how they fight. The descriptions of the units are what was actually given to our coders for use in creating those specific soldiers, and their job is to convert those words into the numbers which will become the attributes of each unit.

Eureka!

So yesterday I had something of a Eureka moment. Thanks to the changes proposed last week, I have been in deep thought on how to make these take effect, especially in the way I flesh the characters out and add depth to their personality.

When the book was more epic in scope, I spent far more time concerned with the politics between factions, the overview of their ambitions, and basically giving a blow by blow account of the tale, much like a reporter does for news coverage of major events. Now that the story is following more of an adventure template rather than the epic, I am free to devote more to the people who populate the world of Vinland rather than the events, as such it becomes more personalised and dramatic.

As a part of this, I began to create an in-depth overview of each of the characters, noting down little details like scars, personal foibles and habits. Things like Jorvik’s black teeth and Gorran’s exclamations of optimism will become far more widespread, and hopefully will truly give life to the people there. Everyone has these little niggling things, but it is only once you get to know that person well enough that you become noticeable. Now, imagine being stuck on a small boat for several weeks, every single habit would become well known to you.

Along with the built up personalities there becomes more scope for conflict, we now have personality traits that are incompatible with others. Leif, for example, plays a prank on Jorvik which leaves him humiliated. How will Jorvik, and his prickly pride respond to this? Friendships grow over time, and are tested by the many trials and tribulations of being an explorer. Religion and faith come in to play, these are the early years of Christianity coming to the Norse, how will the followers of the old gods react to the imposition of an aggressively missionary church?

The Vikings are also a highly superstitious race, how will certain sightings and activities impact on them? Will it drive them apart through fear, or bind them together through overcoming these problems together. What about power? Wealth? Money? Romance? Ambition? All men and women are driven by these emotions, which can make even the most logical and reasonable act entirely out of character, everyone has their own agenda, each with wide ranging and important consequences.

Now a little background before I get onto the Eureka moment proper. I had expressed concern previously about adding in a massive detour which takes much of the cast to Norway in order to develop Norway as the big, evil antagonist, but the time spent doing this would seriously detract from the rest of the story. It was a weak element but needed to be in, in order to tie together everything else, from the vigour that Erik would show in his determination to colonise Vinland to the schism that will form between the Americas and Europe.

As part of the character overhaul I got thinking about Kai’s actual background as it was completely un-developed other than he was a retired Varangian. Why did he leave Byzantium? What caused him to go there in the first place? Perhaps there is something about his past that we do not know...

This led to him becoming a rather more important character to the story. Just why does the King of Norway show such an interest in Kai? Why does Gostav (the bard) begin to take such an interest in the legends of “Greycloak”?

What role will his supposedly magical weapon “Bloodaxe” have for the future of Vinland?

Literary Festivals, Editing and a U-Turn.

 So this week has been rather good for my literary growth. First off, on Wednesday I attended the opening of the Bromley Literary Festival, hosted by my friends at Acorn Independent Press. This was a meet and greet session for authors, writers, publishers and young entrepreneurs interested in the literary arts.

This hit a double whammy for me, not only was I able to garner some interest for Vinland which clearly is one of my passions, but I was also able to get some firsthand stories of other youngsters working at starting their own businesses. Considering my recent efforts to get a Masters Degree in Business Management: Entrepreneurship, this was rather interesting for me. Throughout that course it had all been about the theory of starting your own business, but here I had the chance to talk to those who had actually gone out and done it.

As such I urge you to take a look at the companies of a couple of these young creative minds. They really are doing great things. You can find out about them here;

Acorn Independent Press Ltd.

Firefly Theatre Company Ltd.

Yesterday (Thursday 17^th), I met with the chief editor from Acorn, Leila Dewji, who had agreed to look over the manuscript of Vinland. I sent her three sections from the very beginning and we went over it in some detail, with a particular focus on the detail of the characters and how their personalities seemed to be evolving. This was of great use to me, for it was the first time I had released any of my work (apart from the one snippet on this blog) to someone not a close friend or family.

The result was a lot of great new ideas and an order to reign in the “epicness” of what I was trying to achieve. Currently Vinland is massive, truly massive. I was beginning to get scared that the plot was never going to end, but Leila helped me tie up some loose ends and give the story more of a focus on the adventure of going to America, rather than the geo-political events going on around them, and which frankly were just not as important (or interesting).

The story is now far more focused in what it is trying to achieve, the exploration of America for the first time, the risks of sailing uncharted seas, the superstitions and myths faced by the crew, the clash of personalities, and the maturing of a young Viking noble into a famous explorer. Of course my love of politics will show through in the events still going on back home in Greenland. Much of my original plot will remain, but be rather more concentrated on the activities of Erik in Greenland, and conflicts going on there for love, money, and most of all, power. All of this will lead to what will likely be a second book which covers the real colonial expedition to America, and where the “what if” stories really kick off.

I just want to say one final, extra thanks to Leila for the advice, the input really was valuable.

Ferry crossings, funerals, birthdays and the company of apothecaries.

How’s that for a mad title? Could mean anything couldn’t it? Well in this instance it has been a rollercoaster of a week which unfortunately has resulted in possibly the lowest word count being added to Vinland yet – just 966 words in the last week. Therein lies the reason for the lack up blog posts of late, and I am very sorry to have missed my self-imposed deadline. My grandmother unfortunately passed away and I had to run out to the Netherlands for the funeral. Anyway, enough on depressing subjects, and on to the ferry crossings, birthdays and other bits!

Before I began to work on the book, I was warned that motivation can become a real issue once you hit the half-way marker, which is roughly where I am at the moment. When you first start writing you are very excited about having a story to tell, and highly involved with the creation of new and exciting personalities who will populate the world you are creating. The end likewise consists of wrapping up their stories and bringing the tale to a satisfactory end (hopefully), but the middle is when the doubts set in, “is this too much of a sub plot”, “Do I really need all these people here”, “ Should I focus more or less on X Y or Z?”.

From time to time I buy some writers magazines and see how the pros handle their writing efforts. Usually there are one or two things of interest, but this month’s has been really rather interesting. One writer listed up just how they keep things going, one trick she had was to set a timer for 20 minutes, in that time she has to write something and will then stop. She generally finds that once the beeper goes off she is so engrossed that she hits the “off” switch and keeps right on going, something I intend to try, as most of my other tricks are fizzling a little lately. Do you have any methods by which you keep going? What keeps you focused on a single task?

Another little gem I found from the writers magazine is that once you become published and are officially able to list yourself as self-employed then you can claim back up to 7 years worth of expenses in tax, incurred in the process of writing. So this means travel for research, entrance fees, etc. Well I know I still have my ticket to Thor sitting around somewhere...

Now today it is my mother’s birthday, and as such we went and visited the “Chelsea Medicinal Gardens” yesterday to celebrate. Plants and herbs, sounds pretty boring right? Well that is exactly what I thought, however I was actually pleasantly surprised, primarily because they had a patch dedicated entirely to the plants and herbs used by the Native American Indians, and another on Herbs found in Northern Europe... Vinland has already got one rather knowledgeable priest who seems to have a poultice for every occasion, and will soon be getting a Native American Shaman too, and now I can properly describe the plants they would gather and use for medical purposes, and this adds just that little touch more detail to the story. All in all, a rather unexpected bonus!

Random ramblings and a shameless plug

Some of you may know that I am an active member in a modding community for the game Mount and Blade, working on a very popular mod called “Prophesy of Pendor”. Now the team took a couple of hits, with the lead designer wanting to step back a little in order to devote more time to his family and work. As such a search for a new lead designer was begun, and after days of frenzied discussions and nervous breakdowns I was chosen to head up the team and bring Pendor forward into its fourth iteration. This is both a great honour and opportunity, the mod is massive; being the most downloaded item on the M+B Repository with over 350,000 downloads. But just how does this link into things I was talking about before, and my plans to create Vinland in multiple mediums?

Kai

“By Odin’s missing eye, who the Hel are you stranger?” Erik managed, still gasping.

“I am Kai Miklagardson, retired, of the Varangian Guard”

Background

This is rather refreshing to say; after all my complaints at how difficult certain characters are to write, Kai was a real pleasure and probably the most fun I have had in creating a new character for the Vinland stories.

When I originally wrote Erik, he had a completely different personality, however I soon realised this was unsuitable for how I envisaged Erik's development as a character. I liked the personality traits, however, and created another character that could embody these, the end result of that rewrite was Kai.

So many stories about the Vikings portray the warriors when they are in the full bloom of their youth, but what happens when these warriors reach old age? Not all of them die in battle, many of them certainly retire peacefully to a farm somewhere and live out their years telling stories of their former glory.