Busy week. My western adventures, as Jessie called them, ended yesterday.
From Colorado to Nevada and even California, I’ve seen a lot of beautiful vistas and lakes. I also managed to write a fair bit in my draft for The Warden of Everfeld: Legacy.
My trip out west, while brief, was great. We spent last weekend at a resort near Estes Park, CO, where my cousin-in-law got married. We did a family hike near there, and the next day drove US-34 through Rocky Mountain National Park, which was amazing.
On Sunday night, I flew to Reno, NV to visit my sister and her husband. Pyramid Lake, NV, is a surreal place. We spent a day at Lake Tahoe on the NV side, then drove northwest to Truckee, CA to wander around a bit.
It’s astounding how quickly the terrain changes in that region. Within an hour we went from high-desert valleys and hills outside of Reno, to semi-arid coniferous forest around Tahoe, to lush coniferous mountains in CA.
My flight home was canceled, so I spent seven hours in Denver International before flying to Chicaog, then Baltimore. I got in at 9am yesterday and went straight home to log in to work. I was exhausted, but luckily, it was a pretty easy day.
Vacation Writings!
I brought my journal with me on my trip and planned to write one section/chapter of The Warden of Everfeld: Legacy. I didn’t finish that section, but I managed to write about 2,000 words — that’s my best guesstimate.
I’m really happy with that progress, but I started to hit a snag. I would like Legacy to stand on its own, without needing to be a direct sequel to Memento. However, there are a number of plot points and expository things from the first book that will necessarily carry over into the second.
Figuring out how to expose this information without simply re-hashing Memento will be a serious challenge. I’ll be sure to get feedback from both readers and non-readers of Memento to ensure everything still makes sense. But that’s far down the road.
Overall, I’m really excited to get into the meat of WoEL. I’ve still barely scratched the surface of the main narrative arcs. I just need to set aside writing time more consistently.
Goals for 8/24
- Write 5,000 words for The Warden of Everfeld: Legacy
- Decompress from my trip
- Get some housework done
Steve D
Evening Satellite Publishing 
The West is always great for reminding writers how BIG geography can be — an important mental lesson for those who write about other worlds and this earlier one…Not a bad thing at all for Fantasy and Western writers!
Agreed! There is plenty of inspiration to be found in the mountains, valleys, and deserts of the West, or even just in the scale of everything. The quintessential long desert road in northern Nevada without any houses for miles — that’s enough to stir anyone’s imagination.