A few years ago I jumped the gun and commissioned a bunch of eBook covers for an upcoming post apocalyptic series that I was... am still, working on. Metanoia -Tales of Forlorn Liberty is a post apocalyptic series that was announced years ago but one that I've never gotten around to actually writing.
I've been world building for a good... three to four years now, and for a series that started out as one that I could just pump out short stories for, it's certainly grown into something a lot deeper and involved. I've always intended to write this series and I'm always working on it, I just got a new text book today that's meant to help me with this endeavor, it's just that it's getting more and more complicated.
See... I'm one of these people that like layers - in the stories I'm consuming as well as in the stories that I'm creating. It's like I used to say to my dad about digging holes - "what's the point of digging if there's nothing worthwhile down there?" Of course he'd tell me to shut up and dig the damn hole anyway - but that's besides the point. The point is that I like there to be layers of meaning to a story, that's how you create depth and depth is what makes stories stay with people.
So while Metanoia started out as something simple, it totally spiraled into something complex that has me literally inventing a new style of writing. Which... you know... is not great, when I'm not even that established as a writer. But, you gotta jump in to find out if you can swim in the first place, so why not just jump in the deep end? So anyway, there I am minding my own business and taking my time to add layer after layer of complexity to this series when this happens.
Yeah... some random fan of Weilard's, the artist who drew the covers for me, legit went out and made a goddamn fan page for them! Now, it's hard to be angry at someone who is excited to read your work, but this totally forced my hand in what project I was going to work on next. While I was originally going to write the sequel to Days Too Dark next, I'm now shifting gears and going full speed with the Metanoia anthology.
This is not a bad thing, by any means. There's noting like someone lighting a fire under your arse for motivation - and that's definitely what I needed here. While the world has definitely benefited from the increased complexity that the extra time has allowed for - at some point I'm just going to have to start writing the damn thing. And thanks to this guy, it seems like that time is a hell of a lot sooner than my procrastinating arse had intended.