With Mirgia and his friends visiting Milinia, we are nearing the final stages of this part of the story. Having convinced Karnisal – which admittedly didn’t take much – to come with them to Morpezo, we can now finally find out what exactly is going on there with the strange tower and who Ankh truly is. And maybe we’ll even get a little bit more insight into the shards of Kanarth and why they are suddenly appearing all over the place. But that is all for next week, as I take a week off from writing this series. Well, not exactly, but it lets me hopefully get ahead of schedule again, which I was until I hit two weeks of not really finding much motivation. Since then, I’ve been brainstorming some ideas for future posts which has been productive, and now it’s time to lock in and finish this volume.

Let’s talk about the volume up until now. There are a few things I like and a few things I don’t like from the last few chapters. What I don’t like is the pacing. I feel like we moved strangely slow at first and then strangely fast now. I think I need to balance things out a bit in the eventual rewrite of this volume. Speaking of which, I’m pretty far along on my rewrite of the first volume. I will be posting that version in full on the blog when it’s ready, but it will be a separate post and it will not replace the original version. What I will also do is make a post with some of the major differences between the original and the new version, because the new version will become the canon versions. For example, in the rewrite I mention Sorda’Thun early on in the volume, and in the original he is not mentioned at all. We also actually meet Diana Vadier in the rewrite, but you guys have already seen that chapter on the blog a few years ago. 

What I do like about volume 5 is the backstory of Karnisal and Sorda. I wanted to create an interesting character that will end up playing a big role in the story whose motives are questionable. I love mysterious characters like that who have much more to them than we know. Think Nakur from Raymond Feist’s books or the Fool from Robin Hobb’s books or even someone like Gandalf. I want Sorda to be that character although perhaps with a darker background. Minor spoilers for him, but I don’t plan to make him an outright villain in the story, instead I want his goals and dreams to be separate from what Mana and Cobal will eventually try to achieve but still be something understandable. He’ll definitely be an “end justifies the means” kind of person, which are my favorite kind of villains. The goal they have is something that people can get behind but boy does the way they try to get there suck.

I’m adding this paragraph in later, so apologies if the transition is a bit weird, but I realized I forgot to mention something. And that something is the gender identity of Karnisal. I have been writing Karnisal as a non binary character who spent much of their early life identifying as male. Because of that, in my head I kind of struggle with remembering to use the right pronouns because in my head, Karnisal is more masculine than feminine. Fortunately I have no issues with misgendering real people, which is a lot more important than fictional characters. I hope the way I wrote the flashback with Karnisal’s old pronouns is respectful enough. I figured that Karnisal themselves look back on things in that way, but as a cisgender person, I don’t know if that’s the right way to approach it and I will admit that I have not bothered to do any research towards this. Maybe I should have, and perhaps I will before I write a finalized version of this volume. But for now, it is the way it is.

I also like seeing Dionil again. We’ll see more of him in volume 6 for sure, but I wanted to give a small bit of sage for you to enjoy. And as another treat, I am planning to write what I’ve been referring to in my head as “volume 5.5” next year as well. It will move away from the main storyline and instead focus on the time Eliana and her crew spend trying to retrieve Fred, who is still under the influence of the pirate Bartew. I want the main character of that story to be someone completely new, a member of the crew that hasn’t really been talked about yet. She’s a new member of the crew, but one that is ready to prove her capabilities. With Eliana and Cassandra’s help, the three will move into the dangerous pirate city hidden in the Feral Wildlands and smoke out the pirate ghost to get the body of Bartew back. Because Eliana herself is not welcome there, this new character will take the leading role. I haven’t decided on a release schedule for this sidestory yet, but my hope is to post it later in the year. It should be a shorter story – unless I get more crazy with it than I am currently planning – and I won’t start posting the first chapter until I’ve finished the entire thing. It also will not replace volume 6’s release days, but be a bonus.

Speaking of Volume 6, I want to return to my previous methods with that volume. As you might know, I used to write a first draft of the story in November and then rewrite the story in a more cohesive form for the actual blog posts. That way I know when writing chapter 1 what I’ll be working towards. I didn’t do this with volume 5, instead opting to write the series as I went along, and I personally think that a lot of volume 5 suffers for it. There’s good ideas there, but the cohesion kind of sucks, if I do say so myself. I think it’s my worst volume since volume 2. This is all a way for me to get better at writing and although I’m unfortunately not getting a lot of feedback from other people for my stories, I do try to be critical of my own work as best I can. I like Volumes 1, 3 & 4 a lot, and think there’s a really great core there. Volume 2 is bad. It has a few good chapters for sure – I like the scenes in Fitseren – but overall there’s no substance. Volume 5 is a lot better than that but feels incohesive like I said. With volume 6 I’m hoping to return to more stable storytelling that feels planned out from start to finish. I also hope to figure out some of the key details about the cult, Sorda’Thun, Abu and the different religious orders some more before diving into volume 6 so that what I write in volume 6 both matches the story that you have all read so far as well as the updated story I have been writing offline.

This post – unsurprisingly – turned out to be longer than I wanted to. I’ll be writing you guys another update post next week, but it will be on Thursday and more about the blog as a whole and not just The Hesitant Hero. For now, I appreciate your continued support and as always, thanks for reading!