Category: Design

One of the results of my series’ subdivision has been the need for more poetry. It’s no secret that I love epigraphs. I love the sense of mystery, significance, and anticipation they can create at the outset of a hefty fantasy tome, and I want to provide that kind of experience for my readers.

This is the poem which now opens Book Two. I knocked it out last week while waiting for an animation to render at work. I don’t mind sharing it, as it wasn’t so long ago that Book Two was just the second half of Book One. I’m pretty happy with the tone it sets for what is now the dire Second Act of the Seed of Glory Sown in Sorrow saga.

In case you don’t religiously check my website for updates, I’d like to point out a recent addition to the “True Facts About My Fake World” wing: this explanation of a prevailing in-world historiographic model, complete with illustration.

Cyclical history is great, because it creates expectations. Expectations are great because they allow a storyteller to direct an audience’s attention. And that’s a level of control which comes in real handy when you need to pull off a slight-of-hand maneuver. The missing card can slip invisibly from the sleeve only when everyone’s transfixed by the twirling top hat.

But in order to subvert expectations, you need to have established some in the first place. And that takes work. The bigger the intended surprise, the more work must be invested in the preliminary setup. Not ostentatiously, of course: the conservation of detail allows genre-savvy readers to spot a head-fake coming. A given expectation must fade into the background, becoming the very air the characters breathe, an unseen context that isn’t questioned.

So yeah. Arlam’s historical cycle has a clockface’s worth of epochs, but the hour-hand’s invisible.

That’s not suspicious at all.