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 XII: SITREP - Half done with Book Three

Here's the handy-dandy graphic:

The first half of Book Three - Leonis went fairly quickly, I thought.  It's about the coming of Virgo to Leonis, their sister world in the Beta System, and the establishment of a unifying presence there.  I don't want to say too much, but suffice it to say that the people who led Virgo after its colonization were far better about passing along technology and knowledge than just about any other world in the colonies.  The second half continues this story a century later as Leo is more fully a vassal of Virgo and how the world breaks free of that rule, leading to a thousand years of conflict.

As Leonis has always been an analogue for France and Virgon England, I'm trying to keep a linguistic symmetry, so most of the places and names on Leo at the time of Virgo's arrival are Gaulish, minus as much Latin influence as I can muster.  The Virgo speak Latin but that is on its way out as Old English is on the rise back home.  In later books, I will transition names and words to Old English, Old French, Middle English, etc., over the centuries.  This is by no means important; it's just flavor.

Want a taste?  Here are a couple of chapters from the first half of Book Three after the JUMP.

Writing "Colonies" - Part XI: SITREP - Book Two is Finished

Here's where I stand:

Yay.

Six down, ten more to go.

Oof.  That's fatalistic.  Let me go another way.

Book Two was very fun to write.  The first half is revisiting the aftermath of the exodus from Kobol with a couple of familiar characters and getting the stage set for the next two thousand years of strife in the Colonies.  The second half takes place about a thousand years later and features the source of a lot of the conflict on Gemenon between monotheists and polytheists.  Fun to write.  I hope it's fun to read.

Next up, Book Three:

Time to French it up.

Writing "Colonies" Part X: Mapping Gemenon

If you've been reading my stuff for a while, you know I love mapping things.

I haven't made maps for every book in the Colonies series thus far, but when I begin to have to deal with multiple locations and making references in dialogue, it seems like the right thing to do.

Without further ado, here's the map I've crafted for Book Two: Gemenon:

Click to embiggen

There's a lot to say about this, but I don't want to.  I don't want to spoil the story too much.

Here are some basics, though.

Gemenon was initially named Pollux by the exiles from Kobol, because it was in a mutual orbit with Caprica (then called Castor).  The people of Virgo (you'll discover) became powers across the four systems and they called the planet Gemini.  Circa 800 years after colonization, the Virgo came to Gemenon and brought with them gold, some technology, and their languages: a high language (Latin) and a common tongue (Old English).  Over the years, the Latin evolved and became "Proto Gemenese," which is actually known as Macedo-Romanian or Aromanian on Earth (This is the real linguistic history of Romanian, by the way.  It evolved from Vulgar Latin to Aromanian to Romanian.  What was referred to as "Old Gemenese" on BSG and Caprica is, in fact, Romanian.).  Thanks to this influence, the name for their own planet at around YR 1150 is "Dzeamin" (almost pronounced like the "G" in "Gemini"), which is Aromanian for "twin."

The second half of the book takes place at about 1150 at an important time of religious strife.  The cities along the Gramada Mountains in the west are all monotheist strongholds.  There, they speak a kind of "Neo Olympian," evolved from the tongue spoken on Old Kobol.  The "Retreat" you see near Moreni is the fortress that was largely in ruins by the time of Caprica, and home to the Monad Church and the STO.  (It's what's on the cover of Book Two.)

The other cities are polytheist and had direct contact with the Virgo.  Their names are Romanian/Aromanian/Macedonian/etc.  Some of the titles they use may be derived from Latin or Old English.  For example, a cavalry unit from Calafatis is called a "horsefyrd," after the Old English terms for armies and navies ("landfyrd" and "shipfyrd").  The key conflicts in the second half of the book arise because, for a couple of centuries, both Virgo and Leo waged a kind of economic war with each other through Gemenon, which led to massive deforestation.  The trees of the Great Forest were larger than any others in the colonies and their wood more hardy.  This made them a desirable commodity and helped fund the rise of many cities near the forest.  But the rapid loss of the trees and the lack of care given to the empty space so near the windswept plains of the north has led to desertification.  The desert now creeps closer to these cities and withers their resources.  By the time of BSG, the forest will be completely gone and the desert dominates the continent.

I explained quite a bit more than I intended.  Oh well.

A couple of other tidbits?  Gallia on the map is a town named after the Galleon, the largest ship of the "caravan of the heavens" that fled Kobol, and marks the place where the exiles landed.  Oranu becomes the capital of the planet later on.  Illumini is kind of the planet's religious center, too, in later years as it contains the Pantheon and the Kobol Colleges.

I'm having fun writing about pseudo-medieval times and I'm trucking along.

Thanks for reading.

Writing "Colonies" Part IX: SITREP - Book Two, Half Finished

Just to fill everyone in, Book Two is proceeding apace.  The first half of the book is about the exiles from Kobol (as seen at the end of Lords of Kobol - Book Three) landing on Gemenon (initially called Pollux) and what happens next.  Obviously, they can't all stay there.  Otherwise, it wouldn't be Colonies (plural) of Kobol, now would it?  So, the first half sets up the spread of mankind into the other worlds and it also includes some stuff surrounding our old monotheist friends, the Draco.  (Lords of Kobol - Book Two, in case you've forgotten.)

The second half fast-forwards about eight centuries to a time of strife on Gemenon between monotheists and polytheists.  This conflict will have ramifications for centuries more, all the way up to the time of the TV show Caprica, the Cylon War, and Battlestar Galactica.

I have no idea how long it will take.  I had portions of the first half in my mind for years, but that's not the case with the second half.  It's been outlined and, as long as I can keep going for long walks where I hash out my dialogue and story points (I'm sure the neighbors think I'm nuts), I can get it done in a timely manner.

(I've also made a rudimentary map of Gemenon that I've been using.  I might post that sometime soon.)

Take care.

Writing "Colonies" Part VIII: SITREP - Beginning Book Two

This is the state of things now:

Yes, I've finished Book Sixteen: Earth.  It was weird writing the end of the entire Kobol-verse saga, as well as the last appearances of William Adama, the Messengers, et al, and knowing that I still had something like two-thirds of these books left to write.

So, now that I've finished the end, I have to rewind to the beginning, as it were, of the Twelve Colonies:

If you'll recall, at the end of Lords of Kobol - Book Three: The Final Exodus, the assistant to the late President Stephen Acastus, Alexandra Gideon, was left in charge of the exiles from Kobol.  Book Two of Colonies of Kobol will pick up with their entry into the Cyrannus System, landing on Gemenon, and establishing the first settlement there.  The second half of the book will fast forward a bit and show us some of the religious division that marks Gemenon's history.

As you saw above in the SITREP graphic, I have outlined Book Two.  Meaning, I have a chapter-by-chapter idea of what's going to happen in the story.  From experience, I can tell you that this is highly subject to change (most often, in the direction of getting bigger).

Here's a look:

No; your eyes aren't failing you.  I've digitally blurred it to conceal details.

On the screen, you can see the digital "Post-Its."  Each one represents a chapter with different colors representing different characters (white for the Messengers, pink for Gideon, etc.).  Underneath the monitor, you can see my notebook.  In there, each Post-It represents a separate book in the series (three green-yellows for the books in Volume One; eight blues for the books in Volume Two; etc.).  Elsewhere in the notebook, I have dozens of scribbled ideas and half-thoughts for the various books and characters in the series.

Now, it's time to start writing.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask on Facebook, Twitter, or below.

In the meantime, thanks for reading.

Writing "Colonies" Part VII: Sitrep

It's the first week of March, 2020.  I have a soft deadline of 2021 to be finished with Colonies of Kobol and to have them ready to be released into the wild.  (Mainly because summer of 2021 marks ten years since I first released Lords of Kobol.)  Don't put money on that, however.  Lest we forget that I had to take a year-long break from Prelude before I was ready to continue and conclude that one.  (Even though that ended up being the best thing for it and it became my favorite of that series.)

Still, things are going well.

Book Sixteen: Earth is halfway finished.  Now, don't get excited.  Yes, Book Sixteen is the last in the three volumes, but I'm not writing them in order.

In fact, this is the current status of all sixteen books:

There we go.

I wrote Book One first because I had just finished a BSG rewatch, so the Final Five were still in my head.  Then I moved on to Book Fourteen: The Colony because that starts with the Final Five arriving in the Colonies and stopping the Cylon War.  After that, I did a Caprica rewatch and started Book Thirteen.

Man, Book Thirteen is long.

Five-hundred fifty-four pages.  Why is it so long?  I mean, the first three entries of Lords of Kobol are about two hundred and change, each.  Prelude is three hundred and change.  For Colonies of Kobol, Earth (I) and The Colony were about one-fifty or so each.

I have come to the conclusion that Caprica is so long because the show wasn't given the finality it deserved.  For Lords of Kobol, I used about six hundred-seventy pages to tell all the story I wanted.  Plus a bit more with Prelude for a thousand pages total.  That's good enough for the Lords of Kobol, I suppose.

For Earth (I) and The Colony, I'm reusing characters from the show, Battlestar Galactica.  Their stories were told very well and pretty much in full on the series.  There's no real need to explain too much more about their characters.  Largely, it's just about depicting the events that got them where they ended up.  Now, that's not to say there's no character development or insights.  There are plenty.  But given what we saw in the show, these characters weren't necessarily begging for more.

That's not the case with the characters from Caprica.

They only had one year and then we were teased with that amazing epilogue at the end, showing what the future held for them.  And that was all we got.

So, I felt a sense of duty to get these characters to the points we saw in the epilogue and to then push them further toward the Cylon War.  And once the war started, to show what they did during it.

And that's what I did.  I feel like Book Thirteen is the second and third season of Caprica that those characters never got.  The first half of the book is the second season, which takes them from the end of the first season to the places we saw in the epilogue and then further to the start of hostilities with their Cylon companions.  The rest of the book is about the war.  Some characters are added and some drop away.  Some die.  It's long but it needed to be long.

New Caprica?  Not long at all.  Only about sixty pages.  Why?  Because the story of that colony is well known and brief.  I wanted to provide some more context to certain characters, tell a few stories that weren't told on screen (stories that Ronald D. Moore hinted at in interviews), connect dots to stuff we found out later in the series ... but that needn't take up hundreds of pages.

That's the nice thing about using the volume system like I am for Colonies.  If a story about a particular colony isn't terribly long, it doesn't have to be.  If it's begging for a full-on epic, I can do that.  I have germs of stories, skeletons of tales, if you will, for every colony and not all of them will be long.

So, Book Sixteen: Earth (II).  How long is it?  Right now, about fifty pages.  It might get to one hundred and it might not.  The story I want to tell is fairly simple, even though it details the end of the entire "Kobolverse" saga and The One True God's plans for us all.  Yes, there is an addendum, sorta, to the tale of the settlers from the ragtag fleet on our planet some 150,000 years ago.  But the bulk of the action takes place in our own future, some X-years hence.  (I am purposefully keeping the date vague both here and in the book so it's not invalidated by the passage of time in the real world.)  It is in our own future that we will determine if the cycle continues or if it starts again.

(Listen to the words of the Messengers in Times Square for a hint on which way the story will fall.)

In the past, I have given out PDFs of the first drafts to the parts of Colonies that I've finished.  I will not be doing that any longer.  Book Sixteen is the end and I don't want to give away the end.  Also, once I back up to the other books and colonies, I feel like giving away those individual pieces won't do the readers any favors since they'll lack the needed context.  With the parts that I have written to this point, readers knew many of the characters thanks to both shows, BSG and Caprica.  There's no such luck with stories about ancient Gemenon or Sagittaron or Virgon or Aerilon.  I may share chapters from time to time, however.

Speaking of, want a chapter from Book Sixteen: Earth?  Read it after the JUMP.