Xardan Ta'Caran

I realize I'm late to the party, but thought I'd throw my two cents in here. I'll be honest and let everyone here in on a secret. I'm not the idea man for the novel I helped write. My co author is the one who has all of the original ideas and he has an incredible imagination that I can't even hold a candle to, but I can say that a lot of the ideas we've had (or he's had in most cases) have come from real life situations or inspiration from other novels. One of us will hear of something or read something and think "what if this was different in 'x' way," which leads to a whole new storyline. I can say that most of my originality (which isn't much) comes from seeing what other authors are doing and trying to decide if I think I could do it better (or differently). Most times I can't come up with something better, but I am good at coming up with something markedly different from what they came up with, which leads to fun new situations. But to be honest, my expertise mostly lies in building on what already exists. If someone gives me an idea, I'm good at taking it and making it bloom into something much greater than the original idea. My co author gives me his ideas and I help make them "real" by adding back story and reasoning behind all of it. To that end, it's probably no surprise that the bulk of my solo "writing" has been mostly in the fan fiction area of things (and there hasn't been much of that to be honest).

Several of the names I used when I was writing a novel came from WoW. I just ran around looking at character names in the big cities and wrote down the ones I liked best.

I'm not sure if he's interested in doing something for you, but @Koh did the cover art for my book and did a FANTASTIC job.

I hope nobody minds, but this one really resonated with me considering the recent events. It was actually written by my sister. Also, I'm not sure if bringing in current events like this will cause issues, so rather than getting angry or upset, let me know that this bothers you and it will be removed post haste. Thanks!

I'm also not sure how your magic system works, but just based on what I've read it seems that your magic is based a LOT around electricity. Could the other side use EMP type technology in their arrow heads that upon impact shut off all of the ammunition in a certain area? I do realize it would make the effect very localized, but if they knew what they were doing they could create a large crossbow (even a ballista would work) and launch their EMP arrowhead into the center of the enemy lines at least temporarily giving themselves an advantage.

I'll chime in here and say that creating a good magic system with proper checks and balances is difficult to say the least.It took my co author and I close to 10 years to finally come up with a magic system that we thought was workable enough to publish. Once you have your magic system in place (even as a rough draft), let me know. I'm not so great at helping design from the ground up, but once there is a design, my specialty is in enhancing what's already there and finding the "plot holes" that typically come along with a rough draft. I'd be happy to help, but definitely go to the other guys while it's still in the design phase.

I know that my co-author and I just use Word documents saved in Dropbox for all of the above. Different sub folders lead to the different things we need (like the rough drafts of books, short stories we've written, character details, lore details, etc). I know it's not the best option for everyone, but if you have a bunch of Word documents broken into all of the sub categories, Dropbox is free and pretty easy to use. Plus it adds the benefit of being usable on almost every device (although depending on what device you're using, you may need to find a different word processing software). Hopefully this helps at least a little bit, but I'm also abundantly aware that there are a great deal of different software out there that may work better. Just giving you one small option that works for the two of us. Good luck!

Thank you @1st of Lunch! I'm happy to get feedback from others who love to read and/or write. We did gear this book towards the YA group, so we wanted to keep it as clean as we could. That way there are as few chances as possible for someone to tell their tween-teenager not to read it. Also, I have heard that the ending was not appreciated by multiple people. I don't think we'll do that in future books, but this one is a little too late to adjust. ;-)

The free promotion has now ended. Hope you all got a copy before it did! Thanks everyone!

Hey everyone, I forgot to post this earlier this week, but wanted to throw this out there for anyone who has been interested. My ebook is free for today and possibly tomorrow (I can't remember which day we kicked it off, but it was a 5 day promotion starting... I think the day before Christmas). Feel free to go download it, read it, then leave your review on Amazon so I can have more of them. Good, bad, or ugly, we want as many people to read and review the book as we can get! https://www.amazon.com/Knight-Strolm-Knighthood-Khesyc-Book-ebook/dp/B07VQ8T9TZ/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=knight+of+strolm&qid=1577457973&sr=8-1 Thanks!

I was on the other side of the coin from you @Govir, but I think that's because I only listened to the audiobook and it was being performed by a woman, so I automatically associated both of them to the female side of things. I do have to say that I'm also with you @Singer the Ooklalala. Once I get a mental picture, it's set and I can't change it no matter how much I try. Good to know it's not just me! ;-)

I actually just finished Starsight myself not an hour ago and I'll tell you guys the truth: the use of they/them was VERY noticeable to me and was constant. I was listening to the novel on Audible and actually had a difficult time differentiating between when they were referring to a singular "they" and when they were referring to a group of "they." There were some times where they referred to "they" as Morriumur while Spensa was busy talking to the entire flight. It got a little (and sometimes a lot) muddled in my brain. But I can say that as someone who was hoping for some kind of gender distinction throughout the book, I'm 99% sure there never is one. Diones are always referred to as "they" specifically because there's no such thing as male or female in their race. Only red and blue.

That's what I thought the answer would be, but better safe than sorry. Thanks!

Is there somewhere we should be sending our Q&A audio or video files? I recorded the whole thing, but I figured there have got to be at least 10 or 15 people who did the same and I'm not sure if sending mine somewhere would do any good. Anyone know for sure?

Gotcha. Just wanted to verify. This sounds like an incredible start to a story. I look forward to hearing more, but I don't think you've gone too overpowered with your character. He could be incredibly intriguing and I look forward to reading more about him!

I just want to make sure we're on the same page here. So he can choose how small of organisms are killed in his "backlash?" I assumed it was just an inherent side effect of using the power. I figured the summon/vanish effect was limited to a size that he could see because of normal human stuff, but wanted to know how the backlash portion worked.

So I have a question or two. First and foremost, does he have to have held or observed the object before being able to summon it or is it more like "I want this thing" so the universe creates it and sends it to him? Second, how far does the "death circle" reach? Meaning does it reach only sentient beings (including insects and such) or does it go all the way to the atomic level? Could he use his power to remove harmful bacteria in the food he's about to eat kind of a thing? Either way, I think these powers are not too overpowered so far (but that will depend somewhat on the answers to the above questions). The key to any story is balance. As long as others have powers very similar in scale to his, you should be good to go. If they don't, then there should be a (semi) logical reason why he has powers nobody else does. I also want to point out that character traits being the weakness to his powers is a great idea. There doesn't always need to be a specific physical weakness to every power. Sometimes they just don't exist. Character weaknesses then become the bread and butter of how you can balance powers like this.

So I'm going to throw my theory out there here. I've long wondered if Odium is going around hunting shards and to answer this question: I actually wonder if he just thinks that if he splinters every other shard, his 1/16th of the total power will be enough to "take over." I don't think he'll gain power, but the less residual power there is in others, the more significant his small portion becomes. It also seems to me that most shards are invested, but Odium was not. I've long believed that Honor bound Odium to Roshar in an attempt to keep the other shards from being splintered as he knew they would be if Odium escaped. That would also make sense as it's the "honorable" thing to do for a shard. I've wondered if it was a very selfless act performed by Honor to make sure Odium stayed put long enough for someone to figure out how to remove his influence.

Ok. That lends a lot more to the thought process. So my only remaining thought on that is that perhaps there ought to be a much smaller caste of the undead who sacrificed themselves in order to become undead. That would allow you to have the "good" side of the coin but not have it be overpowered. Most people wouldn't want to sacrifice themselves to become undead, but those who do would end up being able to help the area they are tied to immensely. Obviously that's just a suggestion, but I think it would be good to just show that not all undead were made that way by manipulation. Some chose that fate so they could help someone or something they love. In either case, I like the idea you have going here. It's very intriguing (especially with the contracts saying "you will become a construct should you die"). I'd love to see how this story develops!

So I have to say that I like these ideas. They're somewhat typical in many sense, but very unique takes to old ideas. The only feedback I could offer is that maybe you should have a "good" version of each as well. So far everything here makes these sound like a predominantly evil caste of "things" that are only out to protect an evil treasure or keep a necromancer safe (although I do realize this may just be my perception). Having some of these creatures that are inherently good in nature could be a good counterpoint to the evil side. I'm just imagining some cave somewhere with a Necromancer who has given life to a bunch of skeletons to attack a city, then a "good" necromancer that lives within the city does the same thing, but ties his skeletons to protect the outer wall of the city itself and gives each a command not to harm the residents of the city. In either case, the commands given to these undead would be integral to who/what they are (as far as the non-sentient ones go) and the personality of the person who tied their life or had their life tied to another "power" would seem to make all the difference. If an inherently good person was tied to life by an evil sorcerer, would they then be forced to be evil or would they have the ability to "fight back" and destroy the sorcerer that created them? Sorry for rambling there for a minute, but that was all of my initial thoughts on these. I'm happy to chat more and share more if you'd like, but thought that was a good start.

I'll be there as well! Super excited about seeing Brandon live for the first time ever. Look forward to seeing all my fellow sharders there as well.

Oh wow! I could just see Wax and Wayne both flying through the air together, then watching Wayne stick Wax to the ground just for giggles the next time they landed. I do like that Wayne appears to fit so many possibilities and yet doesn't fit any one of them entirely. It would definitely be fun to see what happened if this were to occur. As for this one, that's part of why I saw him as an Edgedancer. I could see his conversations with his spren being just like Lift's conversations with hers. I could also see Wayne starting to pick up the accents of Shadesmar and trying to figure out how to impersonate a spren itself. LoL.

I'm not sure if I'm the only one who's thought about this, but wanted to post it out there and see what others have thought. I have officially decided that I want Wayne to go to Roshar and become an Edgedancer. I say that because I've been reading BoM for the last couple of hours and he's constantly talking about listening to others and stealing their accents. I know the immediate reaction is for him to be a Lightweaver, but I feel like Wayne has enough skill with costumes and disguises that he doesn't need light weaving. But if he could be an edge dancer along with a Bloodmaker and a Slider could be a really fun thing to read about. What order does everyone else think he'd end up in if he were to bond a spren on Roshar?

I'm with everyone else. This sets the stage for what could be an incredible story. I look forward to reading more (if you share that is). ;-)

So if you haven't read it before I would highly recommend reading at least the cliff-notes for the Lightbringer series by Brent Weeks. He uses a very similar magic system (although it's not based on eye color). I only say that so you can make sure yours is unique enough to not appear as copyright infringement. That being said, I do like the idea of this magic system. It obviously has a lot of things that need to be expanded upon, but once you've fleshed out the details I think it could be a good workable system.