So, today I finished what I will call the first draft of TARASHANA — meaning the first complete draft that I’m willing to show other people. I’ll be asking a few of you to take a look now and others later, after a round of comments and revision. Meanwhile, questions you might consider asking and anyway I feel like answering:
1) Is this a direct sequel to TUYO?
Yes. The story opens about a year and a half after TUYO closes.
2) Is TARASHANA as long as TUYO?
It’s even longer. I did quite a bit of trimming, after which it’s still 40,000 words longer.
3) Did you write it as fast as TUYO?
No. I doubt very much that I will ever again write a book as fast as I wrote TUYO. However, it was pretty fast, relatively speaking. Everything in this world is fast to write — so far — a trend that I certainly hope continues!
4) Does this story feature the same characters as TUYO?
Yes. To a remarkable degree. I managed to find fairly important roles for a bunch of characters I particularly like, although, I should add, by no means all of them. In fact, character proliferation presented a real challenge and I went to considerable trouble to reduce the number of characters as well. For example, in this draft, Esau moves entirely offstage after the first couple of scenes, largely to reduce the number of important characters.
5) But I like Esau! How could you?
I like Esau too. At this point, I’m planning a short, offset, third-person Book 4 that will show everyone some of Esau’s backstory and also what he’s up to during the events in TARASHANA. I can’t guarantee that’ll happen because every now and then I try to write a story that goes nowhere, but I am pretty sure I will write this one.
6) Are there important new characters?
Yes. I hope you like them.
7) Do we see a lot of Etta?
That depends on what you mean by “a lot.” It’s really hard to make every character central. You can basically take almost any secondary character from TUYO, put their name in here, and this will be the same answer.
8) Do terrible things happen to Ryo and Aras?
Yes. Sorry.
9) Do they get over it?
Um . . . yes? Let’s say there’s still a certain amount of room for “getting over it” at the end.
10) But they don’t, like, die or anything?
Amazingly enough, no, even though we do get to tour a certain part of the land of the shades.
11) Will there be another direct sequel?
Yes. In that one, we will go far south and see both the summer country in a lot more detail and the country south of the summer country. I’m not sure what the border on that side looks like. A river of fire? Of molten glass? A volcanic chasm? Feel free to offer ideas if any occur to you, because I haven’t really thought of anything that seems perfect yet. Definitely Sahara-style sand dunes on the other side — with really ENORMOUS oases.
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Yay, book!
yippee!
Well, what’s the far southern country’s season/element? Is it hotter? Different? Does it come around to the star country?
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Just offhand inspiration, foggy starry mass that sort of looks like a river.
Elaine, the glimpses that we’ve seen of the far southern country are that it has two suns (the second one is the Son of the Sun), and it sounds pretty heavily based on Egyptian ‘red land’ desert.
A volcanic chasm sounds more right than anything else that exists on the real Earth, but I also think maybe it should be something that can shift location, like the river between the summer and winter countries.
My vote would be for something that can actually be crossed, as the river between winter and summer countries can be forded or bridged, but a river of molten lava sure couldn’t! But a water-river would encourage dense settlement on its banks, which you may not want. I’ll have to think on this…
Can’t wait to see the star country! I hope we also see more of the winter country’s singers :)
A salt flat, maybe? Or else a ‘river’ of quicksand similar to a marsh or swamp in that there’s a perilous step-wrong-and-die way to cross?
There’s something to be said for all of the borders being rivers. At first, it might seem crazy having a river next to a fire land, but it is no less crazy than having a river next to an ice land. The ice land does not freeze the river. The fire land does not evaporate it. And if there are oases in the fire land, there is clearly water anyway. Furthermore, a large river strongly fits the Nile / Egyptian imagery. It would be odd to have any Egyptian-related imagery without a river, given the centrality of the Nile to Egypt. I grew up in the Southwest with the Rio Grande in sight, and there is no question I was living in a desert.
And a river border or crossing into the Land of the Shades is also mythically very appropriate.
Thanks, Craig. I’m leaning towards Allan’s suggestion now. Maybe with additional canyon which instead of moving gets deeper or shallower and wider as geopolitics change.
Oh, thanks, I do like the idea of a canyon that gets deeper or shallower or wider — that is really a neat idea — but I like the idea of a river too. I’ll give that some thought!
Canyon carved deeply by the river at its heart would get you both points!
There’s the Arabic word “wadi” for a riverbed that’s dry except during seasonal or occasional rain. Could be that a rainstorm signifies the border moving one way or the other, carving out a new path for the wadi. (Does it *ever* rain in the far southern country?) Then the old one is rapidly covered by dunes or reclaimed by vegetation, depending on which way the border shifted.
Looking forward to multiple new books. Congratulations!
Thanks, Jeanine!