Ooh new cover art - very medieval in the style. I like it!
I’ve been meaning to edit the first chapter and re-upload it to the Inkshares page. “The fox’s eyes WERE dazzled as he passed from the darkness beneath the arch and stepped into the daylight. Maxan HAD BEEN following his mark…” Argh! Those passive verbs are killing me! One of my weaknesses as a writer that I’m trying to work through is the fact I obsess about the quality of every line, every arrangement of words, practically every letter that I produce. Which wouldn’t be so bad if it all happened AFTER I committed the sentence to the page, you know - like normal editing.
But no. No. Oh no. Unfortunately it happens to me DURING the writing. I’ll type something that’s maybe not perfect but not so bad, and then I’ll instantly convince myself there’s a better way to say it… *backspace*backspace… “Aaah, there you go, Joe. Now we can move o… Hold on, what was I going to write next?” By the time I get ready to move on, I’ve lost the rhythm. Anyway, as I said, I’m getting better at ignoring the perfectionist riding on my back. I need to be a bit more Blaster, a lot less Master and just get the g*d**n first draft done!
Besides the superficial edits that need to be done… There are some sweeping changes that need to be made to all of The Animal in Man’s earlier chapters. You see, one day, I got tired of worldbuilding and just said “Hell with it! Let’s write!” And I did. Only while I was writing it, I was discovering things about the world that I hadn’t prepared for. Like this plague called “The Strayn” that grips the Herbridian population.
When a Herbridian develops a case of Strayn, they have quite literally ‘gone astray’ or become ‘stray.’ It’s not a physical affliction. It’s a complete breakdown of their mental faculties. It’s a complete reversion to a wild, feral nature. They lose anything and everything that makes them more than an animal, starting with coherent speech. They growl. They stop using utensils to eat their food, opting instead for the more natural claw and fang to scratch and rend and tear into their sustenance. And they develop an ‘unnatural’ taste for meat. Live meat. They hunch, they stoop, they start to move on all fours as opposed to upright. Their entire bio-mechanics change. The most advanced cases of stray Herbridians are relatively indistinguishable from the animals you or I might see behind a cage at a zoo in this world. Only a Herbridian is roughly the size of a human. So imagine that Lion-man, standing upright, 6’6” tall, powerful, proud, the sunlight of Yinna glinting off his golden armor, his hand gripping a Gladius hilt buckled at its side, and then some hunger sets in, some beast whispers within the veil of this Lion-man’s dreams, reminding it how much it enjoys the flesh of the gazelle, the thrill of the chase, and soon the Lion starts slouching, just a little, over time, inch by inch, and soon the Lion starts staring down the cobbled street toward a block of Crosswall it knows many gazelles call home. More and more, it catches itself there on that corner, week to week, day to day, every minute, and soon the lion doesn’t bother to wear its armor any more. Wearing clothes has no point, nor standing tall, when one moves so much faster, when one hides so much better, beneath just the fur that covers its skin. And one day the hunger overcomes the lion, the whisper has grown to a scream that can only be silenced if the beast slakes itself on the blood of that gazelle.
And thus the once-proud Lion-man has fallen astray.
So when I edit The Animal in Man, I will need to remind readers of the danger that surrounds Maxan when he skulks through the Western district. He doesn’t just shadow from the rooftops because it keeps him hidden. Oh no. It keeps him safe. The Western District of Crosswall is an enormous cage. The Leoran King has ordered all Stray to be quarantined within the high stone walls that run the length of its miles-long perimeter.
But are all those Leorans locked in this district Stray? No. Many are falsely accused of going stray and exiled. Neighborly disputes in the other areas of the city can be solved by whoever bribes corrupt city guards to believe that their rival’s fangs might be showing a little more involuntarily these days… “Right? Maybe his shoulders are stopping a little more than they used to. Maybe he doesn’t feel so right in the head?” And after a coinpurse changes hands, that perfectly healthy rival might find himself flung into the Western District, surrounded by Stray, separated from his family and from his claim to property in the city. His life completely destroyed.
Such is the nature of greed, or of revenge. Of opportunity and betrayal. Besides our tendency for violence, there are many ugly parts of ourselves we try to hide. There’s just not enough room in this update to list them all. Stay tuned for the next weekly update, due this Friday Dec. 11th, wherein I’ll tell you about Maxan the fox, The Animal in Man’s reluctant hero.
12.04.15 - Weekly Update One: The World of Herbridia & The Awakening
Hello, Readers and Followers of “The Animal in Man”. This first week has been overwhelming! I’m finding it hard to stay in my chair since I’m constantly being floored by how much interest and support is coming my way, and I am so humbled by how awesome the Inkshares community has been in welcoming a fellow author. So please let me say thank you, thank you, thank you for being here, right now, reading this very first weekly update.
Some of you have already pre-ordered the book (again, thank you!), and some of you have elected to follow the project and get a little more details about it before taking the plunge. For that, I label you a savvy shopper, sir or madam! I plan on posting at least once a week, every Friday, with a fairly lengthy description of the world, the characters, and the themes that define The Animal in Man’s story. Besides poring over the enticing details that follow, if you ever want to know more about anything (I’ll even totally spoil the plot if you push me to it!), you can engage me @BulletTime000 on twitter and/or friend me on facebook. Clearly, I already know my story’s great (*ahem*), and I really want to prove that to you and earn your pre-order.
Today’s post focuses on the World of Herbridia. It’s a small planet, about the size of our moon, which is home to five animal kingdoms that have claimed their own territories to form five distinct nations, each with their own distinct culture, architecture, laws, and more. The Leorans are comprised of mammals that roam the plains; Corvidians are birds who call mountainous regions their home; Pescorans thrive in, under, and along Herbridia’s oceans; Drakorans are the reptilian race whose dwindling population stalks the swamplands and deltas; and the Thraxians are - were - a once-thriving kingdom of insects who thrive no longer since the Extermination Wars. (More on that bloody history in a future post for sure, as the events that transpired near the end of that war set everything in motion for the hero’s story.)
Understanding what’s constantly in the skies above Herbridia is just as important as knowing who dwells on her lands below. The Aigaion is a supermassive, perhaps ‘alien’ structure that wanders aimlessly just beyond the stratosphere. When it passes, it can blot out Herbridia’s sun for a hundred miles. The star that gives this world its light is Yinna, and her smaller yet closer sister Yerda is this world’s dark moon, surrounded by a thick asteroid belt and marred by a gaping wound that’s visible even to eyes less acute than a Corvidian Hawk’s. The myths of these celestial bodies have become the central belief structure of a cult known as The Mind, which has gradually risen to immense power over the last two decades.
But we’re not ready to discuss exactly how much influence The Mind exerts, how tight their grip on the hearts and, well, the minds of Herbridians has grown. Instead, for now, you ought to know a brief history of those last twenty years or so, and you ought to know the history of what came before them, and the great event called “The Awakening” that stands in time between them.
Life was brutal, for hundreds, maybe thousands of years before The Awakening. The foundations of civilization were there, but every Herbridian’s focus was ever on the preparation, the execution, the never-ending cycle of battle. Birth. Training. War. Death. For who knows how long. Nothing was written, nothing was recorded. No stories were told. No heroics remembered. No complete victories were ever reached. All five of the animal kingdoms could ever gain any advantage, as if some unseen hand was ever working to ensure the wars would continue forever. And they did. Until suddenly they did not.
A sudden wave of fugue and unconciousness struck every Herbridian down , inducing nausea, fatigue, sudden uncontrollable bouts of dementia. But after a few days, that wave passed, and when the Herbridians came back to their senses, their desire to fight passed with it. That part of their nature was somehow, inexplicably forgotten, gone like it had never been. The beasts in their hearts were silent. They no longer remembered why they fought, so they laid their weapons down (mostly), and for the first time used their sense of reason to draw borders, forge alliances, and carve out a true foundation for peaceful society. And from that time forward, the cult of The Mind rose to power as the architects of that society. While the Herbridians might coronate kings, rally around warlords, or nominate councils to govern their everyday ways of life, The Mind has always found their way to elevate themselves as these rulers’ most trusted advisers.
I’d love to tell you more about exactly how they do so, but I’ll save that for another day. Of course if you can't wait, we can continue this quietly elsewhere... Please engage me @BulletTime000 or befriend me on facebook.
Allow me to finish by simply saying how glad I am you’ve chosen to follow “The Animal in Man.” I’m glad you’re here. I’m glad you’re interested. Trust me, if you stay for the long haul, tune in to every update, read every chapter I post (they’re on the way!), and ultimately buy this book, then you’re not only in for a grand adventure, you’re also validating my dream of becoming a published author. For that, I cannot thank you enough.
