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If the Mendaihu Universe has an actual origin point, it’s Vigil, that jacker group of digital anarchists that form the unseen backbone of the Bridgetown Trilogy.  They’re the earliest characters I’d created, dating all the way back to the original story in 1993.

[Technically they go back further; their 1993 incarnation is a mashup of the original characters in my Infamous War Novel from 1984-86 and an unnamed cast of characters from a short dystopian story I started but never finished in 1988.]

Q: What is Vigil about, anyway?

A: The idea behind Vigil was to create a group of people whose raison d’etre was to influence the actions of others. I always saw them as deliberately removed from everyone else’s reality, by their own choice.  The original soldiers in the IWN were literally drafted into their situation and fell prey to their isolation.  The punkers in the unfinished story deliberately chose to distance themselves from the status quo (as all self-respecting punkers should).  The Vigil of 1993 were a bit of both: living within the construct of mainstream society, yet working outside of it on their own terms.  The Vigil of True Faith expanded on that. They resurfaced as behind-the-scenes characters in The Phoenix Effect and even more so in the trilogy.

Q: What is their origin within the MU?

A: I can’t say too much without giving it away, but let’s just say they’ve been around for quite some time.  This question is answered in The Balance of Light.  I can say that their reason for wanting to influence others is a just cause; they do in fact have a connection to the Mendaihu and Shenaihu, and their main concern is to assist the One of All Sacred — on a nonspiritual level — to ensure the two sects remain balanced.

Q: So, is that why we always see Matthew in a workstation cage, perpetually distracted by whatever’s scrolling by on his multiple screens?

A: Exactly.  He’s a datacruncher of the highest sort and is constantly watching what’s going on so Vigil can act (or react) accordingly.  He’s been doing that every single day for at least fifteen years so he’s got it down to a science.

Q: Who is in Vigil?

A: We meet its leader, Matthew Davison, early on in A Division of Souls.  We know he’s the only son of the former Provincial Senator Gregory Davison, who had been assassinated a decade previous.  Matthew chose not to follow in his father’s political footsteps, instead becoming a software engineer of some renown.  He did, however, follow his father’s wishes to continue his work with the Mendaihu and Shenaihu.

There are other members, who we meet in The Persistence of Memories; in particular is Jenn Underwood, a childhood friend of Matthew’s.  She holds a day job at the Data Research Library and has an amazing memory.   They are essentially the two co-leaders of the group.  Others will show up in Book 2 and 3.

Q: Anything else?

A: Matthew, at least in the trilogy iteration, was partly inspired by Corey Feldman, specifically in his role in the TV show The Crow: Stairway to Heaven; he has both his hoarse voice and his scruffiness.  [He’s the only Vigil member based on anyone in particular.]  Despite all of Vigil’s personal quirks and irritations, they’re quite a close-knit family and look out for each other.  Funding for all their electronic toys is mainly from two places: Matthew’s day job, as well as his inheritance from his father.  Their penchant for constant attention to small details, sometimes to the point of distraction, is partly from my own work ethic in both writing and my day job.  I’ve wanted to change Vigil’s name for years, as it sounds a bit plain and uninspiring, but I just couldn’t come up with anything else that fit them so perfectly!

Okay, I admit I’m cheating here, but I actually have nothing to add here for the last three letters of the alphabet!  [Well, that, and I have a busy weekend ahead of me and may not have been able to get to the last two posts.]

So instead, I’ll hand it to you, dear readers:  what would you like to know about the Mendaihu Unvierse that I haven’t touched upon yet?  Any questions on what I have gone over?  Explanations, curiosities?  Anything?  Bueller?

Feel free to drop your comments and/or questions in the comments field below!  🙂

YES!  The galley edit for A Division of Souls is finally DONE.  Which means all I need to do is do one final reformat and cleanup, upload the new file, and the print version will be available at CreateSpace for all to ogle at and buy.

In the meantime, Things I’ve Learned Via Self-Publishing So Far:

–Preparing the e-book is a hell of a lot easier than the print version.  E-book formatting entails fewer fiddly bits.  Create and upload cover, create a hyperlinked table of contents, fix any typos and errors, basically do what the Smashwords site suggests.  Boom, done.

–Formatting the print version, on the other hand, entails the following: create a wraparound cover, write the back cover summary, delete the table of contents, right justification of the main novel, order a proof copy for galley editing, fix the kerning errors that come from right justification, fix orphan paragraph screwiness, make informed decision about the font and line spacing (Garamond 12 with 1.15 line spacing works just dandy), etc etc etc.

–On the plus side, do the e-book first:  that way you’ve already got most of the heavy work done, leaving you with just the reformatting, cover creation and galley editing.

–Selling yourself on various platforms really does boil down to trying to get on that impulse-buy table, and keeping yourself visible.  Sales are currently dead for ADoS all around at the moment, but that’s mainly because I’ve been avoiding the sales part of things while working on the galley edit (and the TPoM e-book edit).  But when I was briefly featured on NoiseTrade Books, I got a good couple hundred downloads, and that ain’t bad at all.

–I still really don’t like sales, but it’s a necessary evil.  It’s gotta be done, so I’ll do it. Even if I hate it.

–The galley edit goes a lot quicker if, y’know, you actually work on it.

–Related, if you’ve got an extremely full plate already and it’s the December holiday season, it’s kind of understandable if it falls by the wayside.  As long as you pick it up again.

–I really like the quick turnaround time between creation and release.  I mean really like it.  It makes the nonconformist rebel in me all giddy.  Granted, I need to keep in mind that that’s no excuse for releasing a steaming bowl of crap.   We will sell no wine before it’s time, in other words.

–I just seriously aged myself there with that last sentence.  I’m turning 45 in a few weeks, so I suppose it can’t be helped.

Why did I think preparing my first book for release in the middle of Third Quarter would be a good idea, again?  *DED*

Don’t fret…I’m not about to give up, not just yet.  I may be a walking zombie by the end of this, but I have my cups of coffee and tea, my sugar boosters (read: Pocky), and a stubborn will to see this through, completed and to my satisfaction, and ON TIME.

I tell you, though…this past month and a half, I’m convinced my day job has caught wind of my extracurricular activities and has piled on the extra work accordingly.  The volume has quadrupled for some reason, and I’m also getting hit by ‘where’s my two dollars’ queries left and right.  It’s not pretty.

But I’m still on target.  I have less than a hundred pages to go on this final edit, and I just have the formatting and the uploading to do, and I’m done.  I have a week and a half to do it (really, two weeks but I gave myself a buffer in case there are any hitches).  I CAN DO THIS.

Really, I can.  I’m just really going to feel it afterwards.

*

I’ve been saying it for years: the day job is my paycheck, but my writing is my career.  I do okay at my day job, and I’m even an SME (subject matter expert) on a few things we do.  But come four o’clock in the afternoon, I log off and completely forget about it.  My bosses know I only dedicate myself to the job within the hours I’m assigned and no more, because I have this writing gig going on.  I told them that up front when they hired me, so they understand if I don’t really plan on expanding my resume there any time soon.

Still, it can get pretty crazy, balancing between the job and the writing. One often drains you of the other, so it’s up to you to decide which deserves your stubborn refusal to give up and which one falls by the wayside.  Sometimes it’s the day job (if you can swing it), and sometimes it’s the book.  It’s frustrating when you have to decide on one or the other.  I’ve always tried my best to stay with both for as long as I can, or at least until I need a physical and mental break, mainly to avoid having to make that choice.  Sometimes that comes back to bite me in the butt in the form of illness or exhaustion.  Is it worth it, though?  That’s up to personal choice.  It’s worth it for me, at any rate.

Going the indie route has put an interesting spin on it, however.  Not only am I balancing an unexpectedly heavy workload at the day job, I’m doing pretty much everything that goes into making a self-published book, both before and after the drop date.  The release date is only one of many goals; once it’s out there, I have to start nudging it in various directions to promote it.  That’s going to be a bit of a long-term job…alongside starting the process all over again for The Persistence of Memories.

It’s not for everyone, I’ll tell you that.  There are a lot of moving parts, a lot of things to pay attention to, a lot of things that could go wrong…and the temptation to kludge one or the other and call it done.  And you don’t want to do that for either one.  I’m only doing this because I want to, and I know exactly what I’m doing this time out.

Still…tell me again why I thought this was going to be a good idea during the one of the busiest times of the year at my day job…?

I’m not entirely happy with this one, though I do kind of like how it came out. I’m a bit frustrated because I wanted to draw Amna Ehramanis (Denni’s best friend), but realized the person was looking more like an adult than a teenager, and Amna is supposed to be very petite. So halfway through I made some changes and kinda sorta drew Akaina Shalei instead. Although I think I got the face close, she’s actually much more muscular, and is supposed to have the Meraladian wide face that Caren and Denni inherited.

[Short version: Akaina Shalei is one of two Mendaihu adepts who offer assistance to Caren and Poe, right after the Awakening ritual. She and her brother Ashyntoya have worked together as adepts for years and are highly respected. I will most likely redraw her and add Ashyntoya as a double sketch next time out.  Also, the patch you see on her right arm is the Shalei clan sigil of two intersecting circles, which is also used by the Mendaihu to signify Lightwalking, or dual realities.]

Hey there!

Sorry I haven’t been able to update at all this week…I’ve had an extremely busy few weeks with Day Jobbery stuff — training, office visits, and whatnot — which has put a bit of a strain on my writing schedule.  You probably know already that I hate it when that happens, but it is what it is.  I was really looking forward to drawing and posting my next character sketches, too!

On the plus side, I’ve been using what writing time I do have on a new Mendaihu Universe story, which I am writing completely via longhand in a trusty 3-subject notebook.  I’ve also been working on a ‘secret project’ on my daily words as well.

[What’s that, you say?  What happened to Walk in Silence and Blogging the Beatles?  Well, long story short, let’s just say I was a bit, er, generous about my assumptions as to where I was in terms of having them finished.  WiS needs a major retooling and BtB is off the table for now, for various reasons I won’t get into at the moment.  The Curse of Announcing Best Laid Plans and all that.  Still–the shopping around of the Bridgetown Trilogy and related projects is moving quite nicely, so it’s not a complete loss.]

ANYWAY.

Due to said Day Jobbery stuff and multiple personal events going on, I will most likely not be able to make any updates here until at least after 7 April.  So hang tight, there’s more coming!   Thanks for waiting!