| I worked on the story all through high school. Don’t get the wrong idea and think that it suddenly got in the way of my school work, it really didn’t. I had been drawing instead of doing my school/homework for years, and writing just took the place of drawing. My grades didn’t suffer because I was already swimming in D’s and F’s, just like Einstein! Not sure if that makes me really smart or really dumb. Don’t answer that.
I began calling the story The Quest simply because it needed a title. I didn’t much care for it, it seemed too plain, but I couldn’t think of anything better. And I never did think of anything better, so The Quest stuck. I’m very glad it did, it fits perfectly and plain is still sexy. As my friends and classmates found out I was writing a book, they insisted that they get to be characters, which I was more than happy to oblige. 75% of the characters are based on someone I once knew or thought I knew, some right down to their personalities while others share name (and face) only. 10% are based on myself, or more specifically my desired self, and 15% just come out of thin air. Those are exact figures, by the way. I spent three years working on the graph and another five on an eight hundred page report, all costing rough $9.2 million. Just kidding, of course; do I look like the government? As I said, I worked on the Quest all through high school. This was before home computers became as widespread as they are today and I used my mother’s old typewriter. Not a word processor, mind you, an actual typewriter. Some of you youngins simply cannot fathom what that was like, but let me tell you, if I had to give up MSWord for a typewriter, I’d likely smash my head into the keys. However, this was 1992-95, and I was thrilled to be clacking away on the keys. I became a rather decent typist rather quickly and eventually came up with a 320 page novel by my senior year. It sure seemed to take a lot longer than two years. Yes, I still have that very original copy and no, you may not see it. Ever. I submitted it to various publishers my senior year with high hopes and dreams. I also received various rejection letters, and with dern good reason, let me tell you. I was disappointed but went to work rewriting it as I had many new ideas for it. I tried to find a publishing agent, again to no avail. The only one that seemed even slightly interested in me was a guy by the name of Sherwood Broom, but he abandoned me the instant he found out I was some high school punk with $12 to my name. I later found out that he is a shyster that preys on new authors and milks them out of thousands of dollars with editing and submission fees while doing nothing whatsoever to act like even a slightly incompetent agent. There are a lot of them out there, so new authors do your homework, especially now with the internet and Google ready to dish the dirt on scum like that. I continued rewriting the Quest during my senior year in high school and finished it before the calendar year was out. It was at this time that I also got the idea to continue the story with a sequel, The Wizard’s Return (it should be noted that Book I was known as The Quest only, without the Roots of Evil tag). This sequel is absolutely nothing like Book II: Evil Rising, although a few lines and situations I especially liked were mutated to fit not only in Book II but also Book III: Evil Unleashed and Book IV. I still hadn’t thought about the trilogy thing, much less the Quest Saga. I never did finish the sequel, although I did type about two hundred pages worth. I should also mention that my senior year also saw me begin quite a number of other writing projects, mostly horror/suspense works. There was The Cleaners about a pair of teen girls (friends from my drama class) who work at Quaker’s Cleaners and have to deal with a jerk boss, mean and rude customers, and more the usual BS that comes with a menial job. They get pushed over the edge and murder a particular belligerent customer. They are initially freaked out, but the idea quickly grows on them and they begin killing customers left and right. It ends with them killing their boss. Kinda sounds like something starring Paris Hilton, ne? (I CANNOT believe I just made that reference). There were several other projects and ideas I had going, but The Cleaners was the only thing that even came close to the magnitude of The Quest, which was actually moved to the backseat in favor of The Cleaners. I never did actually finish that one either, and shortly after graduating high school I gave up on it and focused back on the original Quest story. I still dreamed of publishing it, but I also knew that it needed a metric butt-ton of work (that’s a legit unit of measure). Thus, I focused on yet another rewrite. Even after enlisting in the Navy, I used what little free time I had to work on it and had some of my shipmates review it for me. I must have rewritten it three times at least while enlisted and during this time I had ideas for having the story spill over into a third book. Thus, the Quest Trilogy was born. I abandoned The Wizard’s Return and started the second book from scratch, giving the three books the titles they now have. I was discharged in 2000 and once again the Quest took to the backseat, this time in favor of my trying to get my life together with school and a decent job. I continued to work on the Quest when I could and it took me two years to get it where I thought I liked it. The key word is thought. I began submitting it to publishers and agents with similar results as before. Then I discovered a publishing house by the name of 1stBooks (now known as Authorhouse). It’s a Print-On-Demand (POD) publisher, which basically means that I paid a very reasonable fee for them to put my novel into paper book form. They also have various marketing campaigns to help sell the book, but more or less an author is on their own to sells the book. Well, I was ecstatic! Finally the Quest was published! My dream had come true, kinda. One thing about POD publishers, they don’t edit. You can pay them to edit it, but it’s a bit pricey, especially for a book as many pages as the Quest is. Thus I was on my own. I knew there were some editing mistakes in the manuscript, but I was so excited and wanted the Quest out right this. Very . MINUTE! Thus, I reasoned that a few errors were fine and pushed the book through with only a once or twice over. It wasn’t until after it came out in paperback and hardcover that I saw just how many errors there were. There are a LOT, five metric butt-tons. But I still didn’t mind at the time, I was much too excited. Well, at that time the aforementioned marketing programs were pretty simplistic and few in number. Couple that with the fact that I could barely afford Ramen noodles (plenty of money for toys, go figure) and I wasn’t able to market the book to an audience any wider than my circle of family and friends. The excitement of being in print faded a few months later. The horrible edit job really got to me, too; it gave me some serious Lou that I carry to this day. There were also a lot of things I wasn’t happy with as far as the story went, parts that I felt were good but weak and subplots that I knew didn’t go anywhere, things of that nature. By late 2003 I had more or less given up on that version of the Quest. Don’t take that to mean that I gave up on the Quest, far from it. I was still working on Book II with every intention of publishing it with a POD publisher. I also began to go through the 1stBooks copy of Book I with highlighter in hand and gouged the bejeezus out of it. I began rewriting Book I yet again while simultaneously writing the second book. However, what started out as a rewrite turned into a massive overhaul and I was forced to set Book II aside for the time being, with about 800 pages written (and I was barely halfway done with it). Things were changed and taken out, plot holes covered up, things I didn’t like were changed (one big thing that comes to mind is in Part II: Li’s Story when Wenchi falls head over heels for Garrison and asks him out in a roundabout way; I hated that, it just didn’t make sense, so I had Garrison approach the girls and basically trick Wenchi in meeting him later on). As I was working on the Quest, I also began looking for a new POD publisher. I had liked 1stBooks enough and I have nothing bad to say about them, but I felt that the Quest needed a fresh start with a fresh company, sort of a phoenix rising from its ashes. I had heard of Xlibris before; in fact, I had very nearly chosen them over 1stBooks the first go-round. I had received a pamphlet from them in the mail about this time and after checking them out I decided to submit to them. I was very pleased with how they handled me and my manuscript and I loved how they did my cover (there is no actual cover art because I had no such art to submit; personally, I think it looks beautiful and artistic in is simplicity). Having learned my lesson the first time, I went over that manuscript with a red pen and a fine-tooth comb checking for errors before I submitted it. After Xlibris got it, they set it and got it ready to print. Before hitting the press, they gave me one more chance to correct any errors. Out came the red pen and fine-tooth comb again, but of course a few errors still got past me. I consider it an acceptable amount, especially considering the first time. In 2006, The Quest Book I: The Roots of Evil as published by Xlibris was released. With that out of the way, it was back to Book II, 800 MSWord pages long. The thing about Xlibris, and any POD publisher for that matter, they don’t have the capacity to handle massive 1,000 page War and Peace tomes. They have a limit of 210,000 words, which roughly translates to about 650 MSWord pages. What to do, what to do. After some thought, I came up with the very simple Solomon solution: cut it in half. I found a good breaking part that fit the necessary word limit close enough and out of the second book I made two: Book II: Evil Rising and Book III: Evil Unleashed. This meant that I was already finished writing Book II, and it was basically a mopping up job rewriting and cleaning it up. Thus, in May of 2007, five months after the release of The Quest Book I: The Roots of Evil, out came The Quest Book II: Evil Rising. Since there were now four planned books, the Quest Trilogy morphed into The Quest Saga. It is now 2008, nearly 2009. The Quest Book III: Evil Unleashed is almost finished and ready for submittal to Xlibris. I will start The Quest Book IV: (TBA) directly thereafter. What does the future hold for the Quest Saga and the characters that have become as dear to me as children? Well, I have ideas and in some cases have begun to sow the seeds for such things as prequels like The Quest: The Dragon of Kitrad Doe and The Quest: Noknor, Scourge of Evil. There are also further sequels which follow the further adventures of the Viccon Clan, such as The Quest: Birth of the Twins and stories for some of my favorite supporting characters, such as The Quest: Jenna Rose and The Quest: Rise to Jestura (seeing a pattern here?). I also have an idea for a collection of myths and legends, which will be called Tales Told Around an Arcainian Campfire, which takes place during Book I and features Kain, Nancy, and the Arcainian soldiers swapping ghost stories around a campfire one night. Once I finish Book IV, I will feel my life is complete and can die happy without having to worry about coming back and getting ectoplasm all over my keyboard. Of course, as long as I keep getting blessed with ideas for the story I love and cherish so much, I’ll keep putting those down on paper to be shared with others who would have The Quest Saga into their hearts. For all those that made it this far, let me once again thank you from the bottom of my heart for giving the story of an overactive eight year old imagination a chance at entertaining you as it has entertained me for most of my life. |
| THANKS FOR YOUR SUPPORT!!!! =D |
| History of the Quest Saga (Part 2) |
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