The initial plan for this story was fairly straightforward. I was working on a sci-fi story that I’m calling Zodiac ascending. It’s very different from what I normally write, but it’s something I originally started more than 10 years ago and although I’ve written many iterations of the first few chapters, nothing ever came of it. To change this up, I wanted to write some backstories for the characters that will be in that story. The first one of these I ended up posting on this blog as Uncovering the tomb of Danahsereth. I never really followed up on this story but the idea of writing about the woman who appears towards the end of that story and ends up setting a whole lot of events in motion had been nagging at me. Akane is an interesting character that displays confidence while being doubtful about a lot of things. Despite that, she has strong convictions and those show in this short story I think. So let’s talk a little bit about Akane, Maxime and their small but productive outing.
I wanted to spend some time in a more desolate setting. The dying city with neon lights was the perfect backdrop for this story. A homeless person awaiting you at the last station after you just spent hours speeding through the countryside to get here is your warm welcome. Then after making your way through the abandoned shopping streets you find yourself in the greasiest pizza place you can imagine, only to find some surprisingly pleasant company there. I didn’t know what I wanted for Maxime initially, but I had her character down pretty quickly once I started writing. Impulsive, kind, a product of her environment. She feels for the people around her that are stuck in poverty while not thinking about herself enough. Yet when the opportunity for adventure came walking into that pizza place, she wasn’t going to let it walk away from her again. Akane is her chance out of this boring monotony and together they set out to an abandoned mall nearby.
I thought of the actual hiding place for the tomb at the last minute. Initially I wrote this chapter with the tomb being held in some research facility that was buried by rubble. That didn’t feel right after I finished writing it, so I scrapped the entire chapter and replaced it with what you’ve read on here. A shopping mall with a secret in a place you wouldn’t expect. I was inspired by Jax’s song about Victoria’s Secret and in particular the line “I know Victoria’s Secret.” It just kind of stuck with me as a clever yet obvious line, so it would also be a clever yet obvious hiding spot for an artifact. Then after gaslighting a ghost into believing that he can’t properly haunt them they were back on the road.
But I still needed a way to round out the story. I knew that figuring out the artifact and getting it to work wasn’t interesting. That’s more of an added bonus, I needed something with a bit more impact. And I’ll be honest with you, my dear reader, I’m not sure I managed to get something with more impact. I like the direction that the final chapter took, but I was still a bit hesitant in releasing it. I think there’s more there that I could explore, but after putting off publishing this story for a while now, I figured it was better to finish it and change it later than to leave it in the void forever. Despite this negative outlook, I don’t think it was a bad ending by any means. Akane uses her wealth from coming from a relatively well off family to help out a family in need. She also clearly realizes that her doing this isn’t going to fix the world, but Maxime appreciates the gesture nonetheless. Together they set out for London, where – if I ever get to writing it – Zodiac ascending will take place.
It is nice to finally have another short story finished and posted. It’s been a very long time since I last wrote one, and the last one or two I did finish weren’t great. This one I’m a lot more pleased with and I still have one in the tank for later this year that is going to be even better. I’m my own strictest critic and whenever I read something I wrote in the past I often find a million things I want to change about it, but the draft for my next short story is actually really solid already. I can’t wait to work on it, but I have too many other projects lined up to do so. On that note, I’m thinking of taking another break with The Necromancer’s Daughter soon. I’m shifting perspective to a new character with next week’s chapter and I want to write some of his story so that I’m a little bit ahead of schedule. If I then take a break of one or two months on top of that, I could create a pleasant 3-4 month period in which I can focus solely on The Hesitant Hero. You see, I want to finish up volume 3’s draft by October or November at the latest and if things go well I’d like to send the first volume to a publisher by the end of summer. That’s a hard ask, especially since I find proofreading and editing to be rather difficult. What I end up doing is rewriting the entire story all over again, sometimes making certain passages worse than they were before. My initial plan was to finish the volume by late July, but I’m adding an extra month to that. With August being an entire month off for me, barring maybe the last couple days, I feel like I’ll have the time and energy to sit down and finish the final version. Of course there’ll be more edits if a publisher does decide to pick it up, but I’m not worried about that eventuality. Getting to that point is much more difficult.
I’ll leave you all with this bit of wisdom that is probably obvious to everyone but me: Do not start too many projects all at once. You’ll start mixing things up and making your life much harder. The amount of times I wrote ‘Cobal’ instead of ‘Kaylirr’ when I was working on The Necromancer’s Daughter is honestly infuriating to the point that I had to manually replace them all. But I should have a bit less chaos now, and with May break coming up, I can safely put in a bit more time. Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed this little bit of insight into my (lack of a) process and please let me know what you thought of the short story. I put a lot of effort into it and although there’s obvious things that can be improved, I’d love to hear what you think about it and what you would have liked to see differently.
Opal Kaharis 