Episode #179: Do Dandelions Cry?

Our resident squirrel, who I've finally decided to make peace with this year. I say 'resident' as he's been the primary rodent filching the birdseed from the feeder for the past few years. Now that he's been neutered like the chipmunk {aka, 'no soup for you!'}, I'm now able to tolerate him more.

I thought I would take the opportunity to give a proper writing update on my current project, instead of the occasional word count bragging.

To refresh everyone's memory, my current project was originally an 80+ page pile of slop that I had written back when #44 was in the middle of his first term of office ('08-'12). Not sure where I came up with the idea, beyond being mildly fascinated with strange fantasy during the same time frame. After writing it, or to put it bluntly, becoming quite demotivated in pursuing it any further after getting stuck, we shelved it with the other pile of demotivated offerings and moved on to other things.

Fast forward to the summer of '21. A pipe had imploded causing all kinds of water damage in the basement, which in turn caused me to actually move a bunch of my personal property to dryer grounds. Among those items were quite a few boxes of partially completed stories. I ultimately pulled out about five stories to occupy my time with, since I had recently taken early retirement and I needed something to do.

One of the many stories that I had pulled out was one with the working title of Dandelion Tears. Don't ask me why I came up with that title, because I have absolutely no clue. If you know anything about my writing skills, you know that coming up with an intelligent title ranks way up high on my list of things I hate about writing.

Shortly after pulling out those five stories and working on four of them, I decided to switch my preferred writing style from using a computer to pound out a story to using a pen and notebook paper. There are a myriad of reasons as to why I do this, but the main reason was simply hand fatigue. I have been blessed with a type of muscular dystrophy that had decided to take up permanent residence in my hands, and I'm so thankful for that. :/s

So after I decided to make the switch, I got right to work, and much to my surprise, I really got hooked into writing the story. I really didn't have this happen too often with my writing, as I often would work steadily on a story, but this one got me wanting to keep moving things along. Even when I took a break in the spring of this year, I was actually quite antsy in wanting to get back to it. But, I digress a little.

Early on, I decided to write it as a straight fantasy, as opposed to a paranormal. I actually did some research early on what kind of fantasy I should write, high fantasy or low fantasy. I knew right away that I didn't want to spend a boatload of time in creating a world that would only be used in this story and only be around in the final volume, so I went with low fantasy.

Also early on, I decided to stick to my tried and true tropes, for lack of a better phrase, of using sex and violence for the story, which on its most basic level is a man getting kidnap to brought to some place else to be a slave/servant of some kind. But, we decided to turn things completely upside down and sideways.

For starters, we decided to introduce a plethora of elements that were decidedly nontraditional and decidedly NOT appropriated. Basic elements are as follows.

1} Man is kidnapped by a female mercenary who is hired to retrieve him for her queen.

2} The people who go to retrieve him are both his current wife and his ex-wife. Current wife is a queen in her own right who has two ladies-in-waiting, both of which are Incan by ethnicity.

3} Man was formally employed by the Aztecs. Yes, those Aztecs. Ex-wife is still employed by the Aztecs.

4} Current wife was a forced member of a race of people who reside on a planet called The Pod.

Now, some side elements were introduced as well, some of which could be familiar to you in other stories.

1} Telepathy as a basic language.

2} Humans who were cannibalized, became living skeletons, then became reanimated and immortal.

3) Humanoids were created.

4} The gratuitous and decidedly non-gratuitous scenes of sex, both of which actually move the various plots along.

5} The decidedly tasteful scenes/incidents, as I was able to respectfully describe it, of a genetically predisposed nature that did not cross a particular line. In fact, all of those scenes that I wrote were not graphic to that point.

6} The weaponization of sex as a tool of control. Specifically, as it pertains to the intriguing concept of always having matriarchal line ruling the kingdom, yet the ruler having to do personally repugnant things on a weekly basis as a matter of power and doing business.

7} As always, a generous sprinkling of religion thrown in for good measure.

Now, as I progressed along with this trilogy, and early on I decided that this story was going to be a trilogy, as there was no legitimate way for me to keep it at two volumes, I knew that I had to deal with the real possibility of having to use warnings when I finally get around to publishing this trilogy (I'm thinking at least one to one and half years from now). I understand the concept and the sometimes necessity of warnings/trigger warnings for stories that have troublesome/offensive content.

I always thought that having a warning stating that those over 18+/21+ should be allowed to read my adult fiction was enough. But, and this is a big but, with the type of content that is peppered through the first two volumes and undoubtedly will be peppering the third, it begs the answering the question, "should I slap a warning on my story?". The reluctant answer for me is "yes", I need to put one on. I say 'reluctant' because I'm not a fan of censorship in general, nor am I a fan of people being perpetually offended, as it applies to modern times. But I am cognizant of those people who have actually suffered real trauma of the type where reading/viewing/hearing about it can be a massive trigger to things like PTSD.

As a side note, I had a friend who I didn't show certain parts of stories that I had been working on, simply because those certain parts were very much triggering concerns, and I respected her enough not to show it to her. So I would often let her know what the scene in question was, and let her make the decision, which I would respect.

So, with all that being said, we will touch upon the drier aspects of this writing update. I'm shooting for the beginning of Fall '23 to have the first draft of the trilogy finished, with the first round of edits completed by January '24 before it goes into storage. I also hoped to have the rest of the summary outline finished by January '24, as I had written one covering the first two books. Great reference guide to when I need to make sure that things I'm writing/referring to in book #3 are a continuation from books #1 or #2.

As of this post, I am in the process of transcribing chapters 58 & 59 to the computer. Also as of this post, the current word count sits at 238,303 words, with a total page count of 517. Fun factoids, I have used up four pens writing this monstrosity; I have gone through roughly 900 sheets of notebook paper (roughly 2 sheets/4 pages per 2 pages of Gdoc text) and 8 white line-out tape dispensers.

So this is my writing life and I'm glad I can share all of this with you the reader. May your days be fruitful, the pickings bountiful and that you have zero tolerance of those who have shown that they are adept at consistently winning stupid prizes and still have their eye on the Darwin Award.

{c} 2023 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved