Writing the Special Editions Part I: The Writer Compares Himself to Tolkien*

* - Just a little, and that's Christopher Tolkien; not J.R.R.

If you're a Tolkien fan, you've likely at least heard of The History of Middle-earth series (as well as other, similar works).

My Tolkien shelf

In J.R.R.'s lifetime, only The Hobbit and the three Lord of the Rings books were published.  The Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales, and other books came later, but here's the thing: they were compiled and edited by his son, Christopher.  After Silmarillion was published in the '70s, Christopher embarked on what proved to be a monumental four-decade-long task of gathering, cataloguing, editing, and publishing seemingly all of his father's writings on Middle-earth.  And this entailed much more than what we saw in both Hobbit and LotR.  Much, much more.

What does this have to do with me?

Well, whereas Tolkien wrote from 1914 all the way until his death in 1973, I started writing Lords of Kobol in 2009.  My efforts to organize and catalogue changes for Special Edition are much less monumental than Christopher's.  Still, it can seem daunting at times.  Here's a look at what files are open on my PC at any given moment:

Click to embiggen

On the far left, there's the LoK SE docx file.  I use the split-view so I can read a chapter up top and then type my commentary in the bottom portion.  I'm bookmarking and hyperlinking to and from the commentary as I go.  Note that the page length is currently nearing 1,200 pages.  About seventy of that is commentary, thus far.

In the center, that's the "LoK.doc" file.  The first draft of all three books in one.  Created in September '09 and finished in March '10 (six months ... which I still find hard to believe).

Bottom right is the "LoK discards" file.  It includes chapters written for subsequent drafts that went unpublished and even a couple of chapters that were published and got removed.

Top right is a series of PDFs.  Note the tabs: each one is a different version of Book One published across the last decade and change.  (I occasionally published a new version of the book a couple of times each year, but that was often to add links to another book of mine or to update website links and the like.)  This way, I can see that one chapter was present in 2011 when the book was first published, but that it's missing in 2014.  At that point I have to figure out why I removed it ...

(Not pictured: image viewer, which I have open so I can check maps and such.)

I created the SE file a few months ago, pasting in all five books.  Then I returned to Colonies briefly to write that one-off chapter detailed in the previous blog post.  Last week, I came back to the SE to organize things and I made the fully linked table of contents.  Over this past weekend, I started reading and commentating in earnest.  

We seem to be on track for that December release date.

Thanks for reading.

Writing 'Colonies' Part XIII: SITREP - Book Three (and Volume One) Are Finished

See for yourself:

Leonis ended up being an enjoyable exercise in writing and plotting.  How to set up a thousand-year war between two worlds ... I planted some seeds that don't begin to sprout until Book Four (which I've already outlined, as you can see).

With the completion of Book Three: Leonis, Volume One is also finished.  I made a graphic to show you how I (currently) plan to separate the books into volumes:

Yes, Volume One is "only" three books.  As that volume is subtitled Foundation, these three books had to set up all that follows.  In Book One: Earth, we set up the Final Five and their flight to the Colonies.  In Book Two: Gemenon, it's the conflict between monotheism and polytheism there that later becomes part of the Cylons' programming.  In Book Three: Leonis, it's setting the stage for the conflict between Leo and Virgo, one that shapes everything that happens in the Colonies for a millennium.

Volume Two: Evolution is just that.  How these different worlds evolve and how they are shaped by their masters who live on far away planets.  I get cracking on that in short order, starting with Book Four: Virgon.

Thanks for reading.

Writing Colonies, Part II: The Final Five and The Colony

If you follow me on Facebook, you saw me post the image for Book Fourteen: The Colony.  (If you don't follow me on Facebook, you should.)

This is the part of the book(s) I'm currently writing.  Why?  Well, I just finished Book One: Earth which featured the Final Five.  In this book, the Five finally reach the Twelve Colonies.  It made sense for me to go ahead and keep writing with the same characters while they were fresh in my head.

As mentioned on the show, this happened in the twelfth year of the First Cylon War and they convinced the Cylons to end the conflict in exchange for the Five giving them resurrection technology.

For a long while, this book was going to be subtitled The Enemy only because I thought Colonies of Kobol - Book Fourteen: The Colony was kinda redundant.  But that would conflict with the naming convention I established with every other book in the series.  So The Colony it is.

Minor spoilers next, though you'll likely forget about it by the time I'm ready to release the damn things.

Book Thirteen is Caprica.  It will pick up after the end of that series and show the revolution that led to the war, as well as the first parts of the war.  Fourteen will have more of the war, then the Five arrive and the book will become more about them helping the Cylons create the "skinjobs."

Before that, though, I wrote some chapters about the Five's journey to the Colonies and a big problem I didn't know I had.  You can read about it after the JUMP:

Colonies of Kobol - Book One ... A Few Chapters from Earth

I'm nearing the end of the #BSG #TotalReWatch and I'm already about a third of the way through the first section of Colonies of Kobol, the sequel to Lords of Kobol designed to fill in the blanks between, during, and after that book series and all of the Battlestar Galactica TV series.

What do you need to know?  You should have read the Lords of Kobol trilogy and Prelude.  If you haven't read that free series yet, here's the link.  (Naturally, I'm expecting that you've seen all of the Battlestar Galactica TV series.  Duh.)

Even though I wrote most of what follows a couple of months ago, it's oddly timely.  Also, there's likely to be changes regarding the timelines, word choices, etc.  This is largely a first draft.

All of that being said, read on after the JUMP.

SimCity and Middle Earth

Given all the hate being flung SimCity 5's way, I thought I'd reminisce about SimCity 4 and present some of the mods I made way back when.

Yes, that's Middle Earth.  I made the biggest possible map, broke it up into appropriate "city" borders and then manually sculpted the topography to match, as close as possible, Middle Earth as presented in Tolkien's works.

(For a stupid-huge version of the top map, click HERE.)

As you can see, I made buildings, too.  Left, the Argonath on either side of the Anduin; center, the Black Gate of Mordor; right, the Golden Hall of Meduseld (difficult to see, but it is laden with horse motifs).  I just dropped them on the map so I could make screencaps for this post.  That's why the ground around them doesn't match up.

Those are the least interesting buildings I made.  I actually built Isengard, complete with the dark tower Orthanc.  It was huge ... gaping pits rent the ground and smoke spewed into the air, surrounded by orcish machinery.  Taller than that, Barad-dûr, complete with an eye atop the tower that bathed the obsidian structure in a hellish orange glow.  The crowning achievement, however, was my Minas Tirith.  Humongous.  Trebuchets, statues, the fountain, the White Tree, the Tower of Ecthelion, all manner of buildings and gates, the Hallows in the rear abutting the White Mountains ... it was all there.

Unfortunately, the PC that housed those greater creations died a few years ago.  If I get some spare cash and time, I might extract the hard drive to see what can be recovered.  Oh well.

As for the big map, here are what the numbers represent:

1. Grey Havens
2. The Shire
3. Bree/Midgewater/Old Forest
4. Rivendell
5. Mirkwood
6. The Lonely Mountain
7. The Misty Mountains (including the three major peaks)
8. Lothlórien
9. Fangorn
10. Isengard
11. Rohan, complete with Helm's Deep and Edoras geography
12. Emyn Muil/Falls of Rauros
13. Dead Marshes
14. Gondor, with Pelennor, Pelargir, Ithilien, Osgiliath
15. Mordor, with Udun, Cirith Ungol, etc.

There are many other details loaded in there, too, like a pool of water by the western gate of Moria where the Watcher lies in wait.

I also loaded in mp3s of the movie soundtracks so that's what I listened to as I played.

My big plan was to mod just about everything.  I'd make low-end houses, mid-range and high-end houses to conform to Hobbit and Middle Earthy appearances, markets, Green Dragon Inns, ditto police stations, schools and so on.  I did make a water wheel that acted as a water pump and a lit-up party tree that served as a power station.  I made a Beacon of Gondor, too (with flames), but I didn't have a purpose for it.

Anyway, time got away from me and I just stopped working on it.

Hmmm.  Ten years ago.  What happened.  Oh, yeah.  My son.

Thanks, kid.