Writing the Special Editions Part VI: An Unseen Pic and Commentary

 I'm currently in the middle of the Cylon War on my first pass through the Special Edition of Colonies of Kobol.  I'm having a lot of fun rereading this and writing my thoughts in there, including pics and other stuff, references to the shows, translating the Tauran dialogue, ...

At any rate, I thought you might enjoy a sample piece of the commentary, along with a map I created while I wrote Book Thirteen: Caprica, but didn't end up publishing in the final version of Volume Three.

In this chapter, we have the first mention of specific sectors.  On screen, the only sector mentioned was Sector Twelve, which included the location of Djerba in Blood & Chrome.  Due to its proximity to Scorpia and the blue interstellar gases visible, I determined that Sector Twelve was in or near Helios Gamma.  I doodled and scribbled for a while and eventually came up with a rudimentary map:

Let me state up front that I didn't want to publish this in the final book because I wasn't happy with the way it looked, plus I couldn't figure out how to deal with overlapping sectors between systems, how far out from each system the sector should spread, would there be sectors in the Gulf?, and so on.

In the end, I decided that there were twenty sectors overall.  Sectors Alpha, Beta, Gamma, and Delta are comprised of the main planets of each respective solar system, but a solar system is much bigger than just the orbits of its planets.  There are Kuiper Belts, Oort Clouds, and more.  Simplified for the purposes of this book, however, I primarily worried about the Outer Belt (aka Kuiper Belt) where dwarf planets, tylium, ores, water, etc., can be found. 

So why are the other sectors numbered that way?  Well, for Sector Twelve, I knew it had to be in Gamma and I knew I wanted it closer to the Gulf so Husker and Coker's Raptor could reach that sector in something approaching a reasonable amount of time.  As for the rest, I dunno.  It made sense to me at the time I made it.  I recall thinking the first sector of each system would be anchored to its "corner."  (For example, since Alpha is in the lower left from this perspective at this time, its first sector is in the lower left corner, and the others go from there.)

Let's just say the military likes to complicate things and move past it.

Thanks for reading.

Writing the Special Editions Part V: Halfway Point on 'Colonies'

Well, a little beyond halfway, I suppose.

Here's the screen where I am now (nearing the end of Picon):

Feel free to embiggen so you can get a sample of the commentary.

So far, it's been a great deal of fun, even though I just read, edited, re-read, and published these books last year.  Ideally, I'd like to be able to wait a decade to read and write the commentary on Colonies, like I did with Lords of Kobol, but it makes sense to release the special edition of Colonies sooner rather than later.

Lots of details are in the commentary, including translations of "foreign" dialogue, inspirations for characters or events, funny stories, sad stories ... it's been enjoyable and kinda therapeutic.

Still on track for LoK SE to be released in December and CoK SE to be released next March.  As for the 15MB "wall" I posted about a few months ago, I'm still working on it.  I think I'll be able to get around it on way or another.

Thanks for reading.