I’ve added a separate page where you can go to discuss the NEW BOOK without putting spoilers on the main post page.
Check on the sidebar for the pages widget for Alizant: discussion
Well…isn’t that special? For some reason it’s not allowing comments on pages! Always did before. Going to try different themes. Pages w/b funny for a while.
Thanks everyone!
Or download, as the case might be. I can’t believe it. It’s actually done. Wow….Next up, Blood Red Moon…unless I change the title…
Or maybe…sleep….
Just…check out the link, okay?
Katoji: Ask and ye shall receive…even if a bit late!
The “how” and “when” of RoC: Alizant is a bit involved (what isn’t in my life!?! 
) A sequel involving Alizant’s machines was always “in the plan”, but after I finished Ring of Destiny, I really wanted to get back into my SF universe. By that time I’d gotten the rights to the original GroundTies Series back from Warner, whose SF line had pretty much gone down by the stern anyway. I also wanted to write a book on spec for the first time since my first novel to try to get some real feedback on my writing from new editors who weren’t already committed to a series. I felt my books still weren’t as “accessible” as they could be, even without compromising my own style.
Thus, ‘NetWalkers came into being. I knew reselling the GT series was going to be difficult, so a new book and a prequel that would give the new publisher a market for the backlist was the plan. Besides, that was the book aching to be written. Wesley clambered for my attention throughout the writing of Ring of Destiny.
The following few years were … interesting. I was about halfway through ‘NetWalkers when we made the big move from OKC to Spokane. This makes for a very short sentence, but involved dropping everything to pack way too much stuff, prep a house for sale, and unpack once we got here. Again, a short sentence for a very involved and stress-filled procedure that took months out of my writing schedule.
‘NetWalkers consumed my writing time for the next couple of years as I wrote the original, rewrote several times, the final time based on the first real feedback I’d gotten from NY, which had been very, very helpful, then rewrote all three of the original books to include the expanded knowledge I’d gained from the prequel (as well as that feedback). This was a massive rewrite because the idea was to make them different enough to warrant new editions, yet still have the same story.
During this period, I also lost both my parents and we moved yet again.
Finally, in … 2004, I think, I wrote RoC: Alizant. Because of the delay, it took quite a different direction than I’d originally planned…a far better one, IMO. My brain had had some time away from the series and characters and I was able to go back to the world with a fresh energy. At this point, I really can’t reconstruct what the original story was going to be, but I can tell you a new character is introduced that I’d never dreamed of five years before!
I also wrote it from a very positive place mentally. DAW had ‘NetWalkers and the rewrites and was making noises that they were very, very interested. I had hopes that perhaps, finally, that series was going to get something remotely like proper care and feeding. So there’s some really upbeat moments in it that wouldn’t have been there had I jumped into the story immediately after I finished RoD, with Wesley still being sulky and the move and all the rest, still wondering what I needed to do to be more “accessible.” (That magic word…)
So…anyway…that’s how the actual physical writing of the book fits into the overall history. How the story fits into the series chronologically, it starts several months after RoD ends and centers around first Deymio’s wedding, then Alizant’s electrical company and a little fellow by the name of Jeremin. 
Thanks for asking! Back to work!
Hi, y’all,
Sorry to be so non-communicative. Been working on getting Ring of Lightning ready to post and it’s proven to be more work than I’d expected. The file I had was the original that I sent to DAW, but a) it was written in Volkswriter, which meant some manipulation, esp to resurrect italics, and b) there were some things about that version that always bugged me, so I went through it line by line, mostly to get rid of word salad, but also to adjust some relationship issues that become much more important in the subsequent books (those things you don’t know when you begin a story…)
Anyway…then I figured I should go back and check the copyedits to insert whatever was valid in them . . . including the changes I’d made by hand … and they were as strange as I remembered them. I mean, there were the changes due to stylistic issues we had, which I’ve just ignored. i.e. single vs double quotes for ironic use of language in prose as opposed to actual dialog, and spelling issues…grey vs gray, traveling vs travelling…that sort of thing, but I was looking for the (very small…as in fewer than ten?) typo errors (it’s vs its) that spellcheckers don’t catch (I caught more in my line by line) but mostly, it’s the on-going question of…you got it, hyphens.
When I submitted the ms back in the pre-internet dark ages, I’d run the VW spellchecker and I got a lot of words it didn’t recognize that were two words “run together” so I hyphenated them to be on the safe side (except for my created terms). In the copyedits, it was sooooo weird. It was like, everything I hyphenated, the CE ran together and then the CE inserted hyphens in instances that even the spellchecker recognized as a single word. A word I ran together one time and hyphenated the next would quite reliably be reversed by the CE.
One of my favorite examples: storm-wracked. The CE wanted stormwracked, something I’d never ever ever have even considered and which cannot be justified by any dictionary I’ve found. And some of you wonder why we’re amused at the notion that our editing might somehow be lacking compared to books that have come out of the NY sieve. 
Fortunately, this time I have access online to a much more complete dictionary than the spellchecker dictionary in WordPerfect, so I’m checking as I go along. Which all takes time. But I’m getting there. Hopefully RoL will be available in a couple of days.
Okay…here they are. Looking at them, I’m going to need to change the proportions on Destiny (the word in the title) a bit, but not right at the moment. I’m…tired! I’m going to go curl up with my computer and the Rusalka file and pretend I’m working.
But here, just for giggles, is the set of covers.
YIPES! What’s that big blue line down Khyel’s front?!? Shoot…back to PSP…
There…that should take care of it. Whew!
Ja ne!
Here we go again!
One thing I did not want for this trilogy finale was a cover featuring any one of the boys or any one scene. “Destiny” applies equally to all of them, and each one is equally important to the ultimate fate of the Rhomatum Syndicate of Nodes. So…I knew I wanted all of them on the cover. Following the established pattern, I’d need three rings. How about each one holding a ring containing his “destiny”?
Hmmm…But…how to “capture” the individual “destinies” in single images, and without giving too much away, and keeping it simple enough to work as a single impact. Khyel…the ley caverns. Deymio…the rings. Nikki was the hard one, because his is really the most subtle and seemingly ordinary fate. Nikki…not to give too much away, but curiously, his primary function is as a…as Deymio put it, “breeding stud.” It’s not all he does, but it’s his…unique function within the overall scheme of the story.
Fortunately, there’s a lot more to that future than it sounds, considering the child he winds up with. (Not to belittle the importance of being a parent! Don’t get me wrong. But for the purposes of a Fantasy Novel, there’s got to be a bit more than ordinary scrapes, bruises, and acne!) However, Nikki, with a baby he can’t quite touch, a baby in the womb with wide open, very aware eyes…that might be cool.
So…the cover. I began with a really quick layout of the three rings, and as quickly shifted them about. Nikki got center stage/top of the pyramid because the baby in his ring was going to be larger and…heavier than Deymio’s and Khyel’s rings. Got Nikki done (harder than it sounds, tho the layers don’t really show anything very interesting.) Then began to play with the big bros. I began playing with Khyel, and to get the set of his upper body right, I had to do the rest of him…and I fell in love with the body language. I plugged the sketch it into the cover to see how it might look and…well, you’ll see.
Deymio needed to be in his horsey-gear, and to catch his unique approach to the towers and rings, I just let him poke at them, which is sort of his style. Poke and see what happens.
So, without further ado…
All images are copyright © 2009 Jane S. Fancher. Thank you for respecting that copyright.
Ja ne!
More round things!
I always knew I’d have to do the rings one day, and the Destiny cover was it. Thank goodness for graphics programs!
I actually simplified them…no way I was doing a gazzilion whizzing concentric rings! Basically, I just started with a ring, the same as I’d made the others, then I began creating concentric ovals of varying perspectives inside by selecting an oval within the previous one, filling it, then contracting the selection by 15 pixels, or something like, then cutting out the inside of the “donut.” 
Now, this isn’t exact by any means. Theoretically, the width in the back should appear smaller than in the front, but, y’know…this is going to be itty bitty, so who really cares?
Each ring, BTW, was given its own layer. Read the rest of this entry »
Ah, poor Thyerri. So few comments. Hope I didn’t scare folks off with that comment about him being my favorite character in the books. That’s totally irrelevant to anyone else’s opinion, and even less relevant to the pros and cons of the image.
Or maybe, it’s just the weekend and you’re all very properly out having a good time.
A little point of possible interest: Thyerri’s fringe was a particularly fun project, a bit reminiscent of the Kachina’s “feathers.” I did a net-hunt for braid, and came up with a nice colorful one. Then I resized it, making it longer and skinnier, applied the “warp” filter as opposed to the brush or mesh which gave me all these nifty variations.
Then I cut and pasted and rotated and warped them into the braid and fringe on his outfit. Lots more fun than painting each one individually. The top one is the original, the others are variations. I thought I was going to have to look for tassels separately, but one of the variations gave a nice little tasseled end!
Gotta scoot. Monitor puzzle has given me a lot of extra work. Sigh…
Ja ne!
