Made a colossal botch of Clockworks Warrior

I just found a very elementary mistake in my novella Clockworks Warrior. Bad news is I can’t take it out because it would make the entire story fall apart.

So here’s the problem: a certain character in Clockworks appears very unexpectedly and pretty much saves the day even though I think he still had a hard time and could never do it without help. Some readers complained that this character was too “deus ex machina” and I was surprised that I didn’t see it that way even when it was pointed out to me.

Now I know why I didn’t see it the same way.

Because I created the story for my WIP novel Arena first and Clockworks second.

Arena is happening two years after Clockworks, but it is paramount to read the Arena first and Clockworks second. Even though Arena happens later in the timelane, it’s a much bigger story and it introduces new characters, some of which also appear in Clockworks. If one reads just Clockworks without Arena, those characters are brand new and therefore strangers. But if one reads Arena first and Clockworks later, the reader would go “Hey, I know these guys!” and create the impact I was going for.

The catch is that Arena is still unfinished while Clockworks has been published for more than a year, since April 2012, so I’m really the only schmuck who found those characters familiar.

Good news is that I don’t have to repair it at all. All I have to do is publish (finish first) Arena and tell people that they should read it first, Clockworks later.

Such a rookie mistake. My apologies to people who read Clockworks and found the Arena characters confusing.

————————TIMELINE————————>
CLOCKWORKS WARRIOR                               ARENA
<——————–ORDER OF READING—–———-

So much dust

I’m not blogging lately, mainly because my focus is on my Master’s and second because I lack the energy to write my own stories, let alone to come up with an interesting blog post. At the moment, my primary concern is to finish a Master’s and finally get a decent job. My secondary concern is to improve my social life because being in a foreign country means lack of true friendships – you only realize how important they are when you have none to speak of. Way down in the third place is where I have writing at the moment. At this time, writing is one of the excuses why I’m not outside, looking for interesting people to hang out with.

Time to dust this blog and get it back in active mode, neh?