On continuing Sythyry's Journal

[sythyry]

I haven't managed to do anything with Sythyry's Journal for months now. I've mostly been working on Mating Flight, which I consider to be a Good Thing too, but is a different sort of project. I do want to get back to writing a World Tree serial of some form or other, when I'm done with the first draft of Mating Flight. I want to be able to get more readers, too.

Sythyry's Journal has gotten rather unwieldy, to put it nicely. I have trouble keeping track of half a dozen years' random ideas, interesting characters, odd restaurants, and whatnots. I can't imagine many new readers getting into it: there's about 400,000 words to read, assisted only by some rather outdated glossaries and summaries. And indeed, I've lost a number of readers in the last three years or so, I think, and gained very few.

So one idea, of several, is starting Sythyry's Journal Part II. Same lizard writing, same general style. A sufficiently different situation that makes it a whole new story. Yes, prior readers will have some clues about what's going on that new ones will have to learn. But Part II will be mostly self-contained: new readers will be able to start at the beginning of Part II and not have to catch up with the mountain of words and characters and backstory and stuff. I'd also try to have more of an organized plot, though I daresay the small blue cave lizard will surprise me now and then. (Well, constantly like usual.)

And of course there are various other ideas floating around too.

I promise to read the results of the following poll and do whatever seems best to me.

[Poll #1327492]

Comments

Re: Thoughts

[otter3.livejournal.com]

Actually, 2) reminds me of a particular long series of books that I've enjoyed over the years by Katherine Kerr, starting with Daggerspell and spilling over into who-knows-how-many after that. Had a long-lived character like that named Nevyn...

Re: Thoughts

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

Ooh, it is like the Deverry books. I need to catch up on those; Kerr took a break to write Snare but I think she's back to Deverry.

Re: Thoughts

[otter3.livejournal.com]

Yes, I just received the last Deverry cycle as a Birthdaymas Present: The Gold Falcon, The Spirit Stone, the Silver Isle. It'd be an odd but interesting position for Sythyry to be in. Some odd interaction with Kaimiri...