or The Long and Winding Road
More time has passed then I care to think about since my last update.
Work during this time has been intermittent, the Black Dog is a heartless master but you do what you can. I am currently working through the FINAL rewrites of The Blood of the Spear. The goal is to have these complete by the end of summer (that’s summer in Australia, for any of you who happen to be in the Northern Hemisphere that’s the end of winter).
I am cautiously optimistic that I will reach this goal although the progress bar in the top right corner of the site has not updated because it’s kinda hard to gage just where I am at with all the cutting and adding of words.
When we last spoke I was lamenting the need to change the name of my series, well presently I am calling it ‘The Eye of the Eternity’. That is perhaps not a hugely original title given it has been the title of at least one novel and is a place in the universe of the World of Warcraft, but it is also a place in my universe and I first heard the phrase/name in the mid 80’s when reading Sorcerer’s Legacy by Janny Wurts. So there.
There is another title I am mulling over. We will see.
In the meantime, the actual back story of the novel has… shifted. So while the actual tale itself has not changed some shifting in the narrative and world building needs to be done to bring it into line. That will happen once I have completed the final re-writes of the middle section (which have been driving me crazy!).
Moving forward with this book, and the rest of the series, I am working from this document as placeholder/mission statement/keystone. It’s not a synopsis or a blurb, but the underpinning of everything to follow:
The Legacy of the Sahrin
For three millennia the Sahrin, men and women marked by the Eye of Eternity and gifted with the ability to summon beings of elemental power, led humanity to heights undreamed of by their star-faring forefathers. But in their pursuit of power and immortality, ten of the Sahrin opened a gateway to the Void and fell to the possession of daemons. The war that followed destroyed the civilization that the Sahrin had built and the cataclysm, known as the Sundering, changed the face of the world.
At the war’s end a High Seer of the Shaluay foresaw that with the tear in the veil between worlds, daemons would forever more hunt those branded with the Mark of the Summoner. Since that time, though records held in the shrines of the elder gods venerate the Sahrin as saviours, the people have feared them as destroyers. Any child born with the Mark of the Sahrin, or any man or woman upon whom it appears, is now executed without exception before they might fall to possession and unleash forces that cannot be controlled.
But in the chaotic years after the Sundering, other Seers who survived the collapse of civilisation were plagued with conflicting visions and prophecies. They saw that the Sahrin would return and that the daemons hordes would come again. And that the Phoenix Lord – warlord and leader of the Sahrin – would be reborn, and in his hands would he hold the world’s salvation, or its destruction.