Celtic Bard: Blog

Chaptrer 23 of Justice Resurrected has been submitted and should be available either later today or very early tomorrow. I had a power outage and company Friday so that put me a few hours behind in posting it. It is another short one, but we are nearing the end and it was either post this chapter as is or combine it with the next chapter and try to find somewhere to break that chapter up to post it. The story just flowed better with the shorter chapter, so that was what I went with.

So enjoy this week's offering and hopefully I will be able to get next week's done earlier and you can have that one sooner than Friday.

I'm not sure what happened last night, but the chapter of Justice Resurrected will be delayed until tomorrow because I was not able to access the site last night. Sorry about that. Look for it tomorrow and it should be up. Enjoy!

P. S. Quick warning without giving much away, it will be a short but eventful chapter and we are nearing the end of the story.

Sorry folks! I got unexpectedly busy yesterday and completely forgot it was Friday! I will be getting this week's chapter of Justice Resurrected submitted tonight and it should be up tomorrow.


On a side note, I got an e-mail from a reader regarding A Prince Too Many and I thought it was interesting. I decided that perhaps I should explain what my thinking was on that story a little better, since I doubt that reader was alone in his thinking. His problem with Prince was that he felt it wound up being an advertisement for Justice. I thought about that and realized that he was partially right! When I conceived of A Prince Too Many, my main focus was trying to get another Titia-Lohr story so that it was not a one-story Universe. I wanted something quick, interesting to write, and relevent to Justice. At the same time, I realized we were getting to the point in the story where Prince Sharn is introduced and that seemed to be perfect. When I wrote Prince Sharn's character into Justice I felt he was an interesting guy whose back story was unique among Ce'al. As I edited the chapter in which he first appeared, I decided that the story I was looking for was his origin story. So, A Prince Too Many would become the story of how Sharn went from the neglected son of a very powerful Ce'al Matriarch to the companion of a poor young fool curse/destined to be the resurrector of Vindicor-Kimber. And so I wrote a story detailing the important events in Sharn's life, events that led him to be in the Netherlands when Jonar makes his quest.

Now, some who have written to me about Prince have spoken of a desire to know more about his Academy days and that there should have been more about that. But as I said, the story's purpose was to show relevent events on the road to the Netherlands. I did not feel anything that could have happened while he was at the Academy that would impact his path to joining Jonar.

The reader also pointed out something else which made me stop and think about how readers come to my work. As I told the reader, when I read a book that is part of a series (i. e. Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time or Frank Herbert's Dune) or part of a Universe (i. e. David Weber's Honorverse or Patricia Briggs' Sianim books) I tend to start with the first book and work my way through them all. In writing Prince, I think I unconsciously assumed everyone did that and that if you read and liked Justice you might also want to read Prince. Or if you read and liked Prince, you might also want to read and like Justice. This, I now realize, is not necessarily true. I have to thank the reader (RS) who was forthright enough to write to me and point out, perhaps unintentionally, that one should never take readers for granted.

I still think he was only partially correct, because my intention (needing a Titia-Lohr story and writing Sharn's origin) with Prince still is valid but it was also a point that I need to keep in mind for the future. Especially as I work to see about getting my longer works published in book format.


Well, anyway, that is what was going on this week and again, I apologize for the slip-up yesterday. Look for Chapter 21 tomorrow sometime. I will have it submitted tonight! And don't foget, the pic of the map for Titia-Lohr can now be found on photobucket.com @ http://s1114.photobucket.com/albums/k532/theceltbard/

All right folks, correction time. Apparently I mistakenly left A Prince Too Many as unfinished when it is actually a completed story. Probably my fault there. It should be corrected soon.

As to the second half of the title to this entry, I want to thank the several people who e-mailed me offering their services in getting the rough map of Titia-Lohr posted. Your e-mails let me explore other possibilities besides waiting for the Webmaster to pass judgment. The pic of the map can now be found on photobucket.com @ http://s1114.photobucket.com/albums/k532/theceltbard/

The album is called Titia-Lohr (under the name theceltbard, not Celtic Bard, there were already people using that name) and should be fairly easy to locate. Sorry this has taken so long to become available, but I am a surprisingly technologically reclined individual for someone my age. Probably has something to do with where I grew up and the late introduction of computers into my daily life due to those circumstances. Anyway, for those of you who have been asking for a map to Jonar's world, there you go. Just keep in mind two things: first, it is a rough draft of a map and not the usually refined product I produce when I redraw a map several times, and second, I have terrible handwriting unless I take a lot of time in writing (as I do in later versions of maps). That being said, it should be legible for the most part. I will be trying to get the larger version posted as well. The first pic is the scaled down version I sent the Webmaster in hopes he would allow it to be posted here with the Titia-Lohr stories.

The next chapter of Justice Resurrected is up for your enjoyment. I don't want to spoil anything for you, but I do need to apologize for this one. Many of you will be pissed by the end due to where the chapter leaves off. Sorry about that. I don't recall why I wrote that one to end that way, but there it is.

I also have submitted the first couple of sections of A Prince Too Many. All of them should be up, or at least submitted, by the end of today. It is the origin story of one of the characters you meet in Chapter 19 & 20 of Justice Resurrected. I wrote it as one story but broke it up myself to save the Webmaster the trouble and to control where it got broken up.

So have fun and try not to be too mad in your venting if you send me something irritable in your mail this week (though I will understand!).