Monday, June 23, 2008

Chapter 36 Is Up

Chapter 36 of Magician's Merger is up.

That's the end of volume one. I intend to try a new experiment: work in advance for volume two rather than post as soon as I have written. I don't know how far in advance I'll work. Maybe I'll write the whole thing first. At any rate, I'll make progress reports in this blog occasionally.

In the course of writing Magician's Merger, I received no mean comments and no nasty email. Only one review, so far, has been negative. Everyone else has been supportive and/or made constructive criticisms. Thank you.

Thank you for reading. Thank you for catching mistakes. Thank you for spreading the word.

15 comments:

Anonymous said...

I quite enjoyed your story. I look forward to reading more.

Amanda Cast said...

Well, I can't honestly say that I'm no disappointed. I am disappointed. Not in you or in the story, just that I won't get immediate satisfaction on the telling. That's all right though. I've had to wait years between reading books and I'm still praying that one of my favorite authors will write a third book to one of her series.

I did enjoy reading everything and I can't wait to read more.

Anonymous said...

Let's just say that on those days when there wasn't a chapter posted to read, I had a great, big internal "Ah, Shucks!!"

When I saw the "Final" on this last chapter, I was really shocked. Book One? Book Two to come? Whew!

I'm an English teacher, and I haven't found anything in the writing to put me off. I certainly can follow the dialogue without any difficulty!

I'll be waiting with great anticipation for Book Two.

With gratitude,
Gary

Anonymous said...

Awsome conclusion! My only disappointment is the wait for book 2.

Thanks for the reading pleasure, Xenophon!

Anonymous said...

And I forgot to mention--nice chapter name.

Xenophon Hendrix said...

Thank you for the kind words, everyone.

Book two--whatever I eventually call it--is going to require more thought. The structure of book one ended up rather imbalanced.

I need to decide if I'm going to use an ongoing serial model or a more novelistic model.

Anonymous said...

... and I was sure that we were going to see the evil magician as a teacher in the Arthur's next school....
-----
An argument was made about why it was necessary to kill the evil magician; and that's fine, preemptive killing is a pragmatic act but definitely not a "white magic" type of action

That and along with the fact that Ursus doen't know exactly which types of magical techniques are available on their node makes me wonder why Ursus decided to not learn how to invoke the demon. After all, they may again come in conflict with another evil magician or an enemy from Ursus' past may track him down.

Certainly there are plenty of possible reasons for Ursus' decision, I just thought that Arthur would naturally ask why.

(However I do recognize in the scale of things, it's a rather minor point!)
--------------

Your story was always fun to read! Thanks for sharing it with us!
;-)

Xenophon Hendrix said...

Bill, I'm pretty sure Ursus doesn't consider the act "preemptive"; he considers it self-defense. Someone sent a demon after him; he made sure that his enemy couldn't do it again. This might conflict with your personal values--I don't know--but I had to be true to Ursus's values. He's lived for over 1000 years, and he didn't do it by being soft about life and death matters.

Regarding white and black magic, I don't think I mentioned it in the story. If I did, it was a mistake on my part. I don't really believe anything is inherently white or black. Good and evil certainly exist, but whether something is one or the other depends on the circumstances. At least that's the way I see it.

As for not learning how to summon a demon, he knows enough about magic that once he talked to the demon he had a good guess about what first contact requires on Arthur's node that he really didn't want to hear it. (I gave hints.)

Aside from that, I hope that I mentioned somewhere in the story that Ursus considers his chief vice to be curiosity. He didn't want to be tempted in case he was wrong about the cost of summoning a demon. Demons are dangerous, and dealing with them doesn't end well.

Thank you for the kind words.

Anonymous said...

I remember the hint part now; that would certainly explain why Arthur might not ask further questions concerning Ursus' decision about the demon. criticism rescinded. ;-)

Unknown said...

wow, i enjoyed,
curious for volume 2

Anonymous said...

Sorry Bill, but seeing Ursus actions as preemptive killing is plain false logic.

The second evil dude called his master, he cocked, aimed and pulled the trigger.
Only the nature of the bullet(beast) made it possible for Art to delay the appropriate answer for this long.

REALLY enjoyed this story XH!

Good call on not making the following a periodical. Can´t wait for the next books.
Also I´m really happy you didn´t directly include any sex and only hinted at it for now, 12 is a bit early. Though I wouldn´t complain in later books.

I keep repeating "books", because this (multi-)universe you created is fricken interesting. Pax Anglica, Empire? So the Independence war never happened or failed?
Cool premise.
Not to mention the trinity inside Art´s head.

The only thing I didn´t like was the excessive use of road names when Art and gang moved about. It was confusing, simple directions (north, west etc.)would´ve been better IMHO.

Anonymous said...

Hans, I agree with your comments, except for the street names.

I find that it placed the action more firmly in a "real" neighborhood. From Arthur's point of view, I can easily understand that he thinks of his surroundings in terms of street names and/or friend's houses and other landmarks. Imagine a (mature, intelligent) twelve-year-old telling you his story: I think he would be likely to use street names.

Allan T Michaels said...

Xenophon,

I wanted to congratulate you on finishing your first effort. I know how good that feels.

It was an excellent read and I am very much looking forward to the next installment.

The only reason I'm sad you've decided not to go the serial route is that it means we all have to wait longer for it to come out.

But you gotta do what works for you.

Congrats again - you've made an enjoyable world that I want to visit again.

Trenton Jansen said...

You have been doing a great job so far. However, to be honest I think working in advance is a bad idea. I have experience with web comics, which also can be updated either way, and whenever someone starts working in advance they end up procrastinating. Also, the popularity of the comic goes down because there is no system to let people know that you have updated and people that look at your website everyday to see if there is an update with get annoyed and stop reading and give you good comments. In addition, when they start working in advance they start expecting people to pay for their work. Long story short, I have seen many web comics die from working in advance and I don’t want to see any of these things happen to you.

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