Ascension

When I started writing The Wars of Meridian, I wanted to create a quest-based fantasy that felt both familiar and original at the same time. In Godmarked, I wanted my readers to feel as if they had touched down in a new world with strange and indescribably familiarity about it. As if they'd stepped off the Mayflower and seen, well, trees. Rocks. Birds. I wanted to get my readers moving again. I wanted to take them on a journey to stop a monster.

My second installment, Awakening, was to do as the title implied. I wanted my readers to wake up to the reality of where it was they had landed. I wanted them to move into those trees and past the rocks to face the harsh reality that was the new frontier. I offered the darkness of reality. The quest was no longer just urgent, but necessary. My characters, moving northward, began to unravel. Humanity was tested. My monsters unfurled themselves to their true stature.

Three Queens did not seek to diminish them. Instead, my third addition sharpened them. I wanted my stakes to stride outward from their shadows to tower before my readers. I wanted to arm them. I wanted to land the kind of devastating blows that would not only shake my readers, but the very characters that were now skidding backwards to the precipice of catastrophe. I wanted the whispered curses of my first two stories to rise into shouting pitch. And then, at the novel's conclusion, I desired hopelessness.

Godmarks placed. Darkness awoken. Three Queens in motion.

Now, after a month of deep pause, I am ready to begin my final chapter. Tomorrow I shall begin my work on Ascension. After storyboarding many ideas, I believe I have landed on a direction that that will bring justice to what it is I started: an expose on whether or not one's destiny absolves responsibility. I will now begin to bring this story to a close. And, upon the tails of my plot arcs, I aim to create a inspiring message that will resonate with my readers when they finish. I hope that with enough focus, I will justify what lengths I have driven this story into.

It's been 5 years already. And who knows how long Ascension will take me. But when all is said and done I will have achieved what I set out to. I will have honored where I started. I will slay this monster.