A little while back I discussed the origin of the Crystal Tear and explained about its using. In my first fantasy book, “Dorothea’s Song,” the backstory to the Heart of Eilinel is revealed. Wanting to give his wife Eilinel a worthy 50th anniversary wedding gift, Milthanas creates a gem of power and names it the Heart of Eilinel. However, as years go by and Milthanas’ jealousy of the wizard Mohan grows, he realizes that the Heart of Eilinel is not nearly as powerful as the Crystal Tear. Jealousy and greed eat away at Milthanas until he agrees to join Sabrina and her witches’ coven to murder Mohan. Ah, intrigue, betrayal, and jealousy. The darker side of human emotions.
In my second book, Amelion (daughter to the elven Queen Dorothea) discovers a shard of the Heart of Eilinel as she continues on her quest to find her missing mother. The Heart of Eilinel is a powerful artifact that has many abilities. When I was a teenager and still role-playing Dungeons & Dragons games, I wrote down all the abilities of the gem. The Heart of Eilinel could heal people, cast fireballs, lightning bolt, transport people from one place to another, cast a light spell at will, and a whole list of other abilities. But I do remember that I had given it a special power. The user could hold the gem in his hand and open up a gateway to the plane of fire. The gateway would open and lava, plasma, and tremendous heat would be cast at an enemy. Anyone who stood in the path of such destruction would be obliterated from the Realms.
And finally, the Heart of Eilinel could transform itself into a magical sword. When the owner held the gem of power in one hand and concentrated, the gem would change into a sword of light. Back when I was 16 years old when I first created these powers, I just allowed my imagination to run wild. Now it’s 18 years later and I recently finished the first draft of the second novel entitled “Amelion’s Song.”
When I sat down and starting writing the new book, I have to admit that the challenge was overwhelming. I wrote the first draft of the novel when I was 15-16 years old. I would come home from school, sit at my Commodore 64 computer and type away. When I find funny about those memories, is that I specifically remember that the computer’s memory was so limited that I couldn’t write more than 6 and a half pages at a time. That was how long a chapter could be. Instead of separating chapters into two or three files, I simply wrote all the action in those short bits. Still, over time, I wrote over 100,000 words and was impressed with myself that I could do so much work in such a short amount of time.
Flash forward today. With working full-time, raising a family, writing articles and short stories, my time to write a novel has been limited. The must difficult aspect for me right now is making time to work on the novel. Spend time with my son or write my book? Stay late at work or spend time with my son? Read a book or write my book? Of course, I can sit back and just let all of these issues fall away, conveniently forgetting to work on my book, but that’s not possible. I’m at a stage now that I will need to sit down and start rewriting. My “plan” is to start this work in September. I’ve given myself some time off from the novel to work on other writing and to also give myself emotional distance from the book.
When I sit back down with the manuscript, I want to be somewhat objective with what I wrote. We shall see how that works. But did I think that all those years ago, I would still be writing about Mohan, Dorothea, and the Heart of Eilinel? Probably not. I couldn’t see that far in the future.
What I find most interesting is that ideas keep coming to me. I had once feared that I would not be able to write anything outside of my novel. I didn’t think I had any more ideas in me. Unfortunately, when I was younger, I didn’t allow myself the freedom to see that I could write anything that I put my mind to. Often I listened to naysayers who explained that writing could never get me anywhere (where that was, I’m not sure!) and that once you wrote in one genre that you couldn’t switch to something else. But about 5 years ago or so, I started to write fantasy, science fiction, and within the last few years: How to articles on writing. I’ve always admired Isaac Asimov. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_asimov Not only was he prolific but he wrote so many books on so many different topics.
Now it’s the year 2005 and I’m writing down my thoughts and memories of what the Heart of Eilinel is and I’m reliving all those days ago when I first dreamed up the Heart of Eilinel. Being 16 years old. I have to laugh at how naïve I was and how little I could see of the world. Then I have to take another step back and laugh at myself and admit that there’s still so much that I do not know. But that’s the good thing of being alive: I can keep reading, learning, and writing.
