At long last, I’ve managed to complete work on Sword of the Nation’s third draft. I’d celebrate this milestone with some alcohol and torturing people on Discord singing with my terrible voice while inebriated but alas, the Venezuelan regime’s quarantine measures prevents my local supermarket from selling alcoholic beverages.
When I finished the second draft in 2019 and chose to put it away for a few months in order to focus on personal matters and a escape plan that never materialized, I never thought the road was going to been so bumpy for the third iteration.
This ongoing global pandemic, the instability of Venezuela in 2019, a dying phone, a dying monitor, a dead laptop battery, nonsensical family drama, and many other unforeseen occurrences happened over the past year but here it is, the result of my perseverance.
The final tally for this draft is as follows:
I’ve already made four backups of the file.
Hopefully all of the mistakes I committed in the first draft that I omitted in the second version have been fixed. Furthermore, the mistakes I made when working on the second draft (which I worked very hastily and now regret doing so) have been corrected as well.
I wasn’t in the best state of mind and the stuff that unfolded on my life during those days riddled me with stress, anxiety, and depression, which had a negative impact on the quality of that second draft, the first half of 2019 wasn’t simply a good time to be me.
Thus, I took my sweet time when working on the third version. I not only had to fix the mistakes of the first draft, but the ones introduced by the second draft as well. This third draft, which is much closer to a finalized product, has been rearranged from ten (10) to twelve (12) chapters after I split the two longest ones. Each chapter has been given a unique name, which they didn’t had before.
The action has been overhauled, and the ending act has been greatly spruced up. A few things got cut or outright replaced. Other areas I focused on improving has been the overall tech of the world, the Gestalt suits, and a vastly more polished characterization and dialogue.
I am very proud of the results, even if it took me longer than I originally anticipated, given all the things I have to juggle around and how carefully I must manage time.
Pandemic and quarantine aside, I actually feel happy that I managed to reach this milestone, a stark contrast of those turbulent days of February 2019 when I was working on the second draft and I had so much going on in my life.
What comes next?
I am still new at all of this this, this is my first ever writing something of this magnitude, and English isn’t my native language—facts that I have no shame in admitting. As such, it definitely needs and will go through the hands of a capable editor, that is the next order of business.
A book cover is in order, I’ve been eyeing certain styles from a few acquaintances, and once I solve the dynamics of the editing process I will begin contacting people for a proper commission.
I don’t know how much about pricing, but I hopefully will be able to cover it with some of the funds I’ve been saving for our inexorable escape from Venezuela. If you can shed some light and information into this I would be most grateful, because I’m still a neophyte.
What about publishing?
That is the final step that I still need to learn carry out, with the inherent limitations of being in Venezuela in mind. As of the time of writing this I am still stranded in this country (and under a nation-wide COVID-19 lockdown).
Amazon Kindle seems like the way to go, I very much aspire to have physical copies as well.
Sword hub page
In addition to having been working on the final pages of the third draft throughout April of 2020, I also worked on creating a ‘hub’ landing page of some sorts in order to centralize information, build hype, and have a more clean and unified delivery for all things Sword.
It’s a very rough and simple website, but I hope it does the trick.
You can find it by either clicking the link on the site’s top menu, or by clicking here.
Please be mindful that literally every graphic in the site is a placeholder, graphic design isn’t my passion, I hope it does the trick.
Charting the Lore
I will also be releasing more lore entries between now and Sword’s release (and beyond). They’ll be more finalized that the ones I’ve released in the past (which I will be most definitely be updating over the next weeks).
Please look forward to them.™
Sins of the Nation
I will begin to work on the sequel, Sins of the Nation, as soon as I have a concrete editing pathway for Sword.
My goal has always been to not have very long spans of time between the release of Sword, Sins, and Soul of the Nation. They do comprise a single trilogy arc, but by no means, are the only saga of this tale.
Certainly so, this dream of mine has seen its own fair share of delays, bumps, and it’s all been an ongoing learning experience. It would be foolish of me to assume that there won’t be more bumps and obstacles between today and the day Sword is finally released.
You have no idea how thrilled I am to have made it so far. This has been a long and arduous road. It doesn’t shame to say that I haven’t accomplished much in life, so this project—this crimson dream of mine—is something I am most enthusiastic about, it’s something I pray for every day of my life.
As usual, all feedback and criticism will be greatly welcomed and appreciated, for they will be instrumental in the completion of this dream of mine.
Stay safe, and have a fantastic month of May.
-Kal
