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Ahh, what great thoughts!
It was thinking exactly like that, that has brought me to the mental clarity I have today!
Keep it up and I am sure after another thousand years, you and I will be able to have the only truly sane conversations in the multiverse.
Many speculations there, and I shall allow others to speculate with you on many of those fronts.
On the one front I can clearly note: The gateway from the Courts. Technically, there are other demons capable of doing demonic gateways. Certainly if Tom can do it, then an Arch Demon or Demon Prince(ss) should be able to. But they haven’t. There must be a reason.
And that reason of course is that, that would be a demonic invasion and spark a huge war. And what they hey…what’s one more war at this point.
The politics of such a thing are going to become more evident in Book 2, when we learn some more of the history and the “balance” of forces between the Abyss and the Outer Planes. Let’s just say that what happened in Etterdam was a lesson for all sides, and 4,000+ years later people will be remembering it in Book 2 and later…
Also you will note if you read the writings of wizards in the library, they do have certain beliefs about the rules under which demons can come to Astlan. As we are seeing…these aren’t that accurate. There is, for example, widespread belief that the more powerful the demon the more mana/energy more complicated spell it takes to summon the demon. They’ve extrapolated, therefore that the mana required to summon an ArchDemon/Demon Prince is so great, it would be very hard for such a demon to show up in Astlan without people noticing the mana disturbance and that it is thus nearly impossible for anything larger than a greater demon to show up in Astlan (unannounced or on their own)
Said higher powered demons feel something less than zero need to disabuse them of this. They like to be able to come and go unnoticed by pesky Kings, Wizards and Priests who might want to raise an army and start a war every time the demon lord stops by for a bite to eat.
Well, I’ve never met any of these fellows so not sure.
However, there are basically three types of avatars (mostly):
Prophets (living),
Saints (formerly living),
Archons=Angel/Dark Angel (presumably never living but people make the same assumption about demons, so who knows?) [as far as I know the Etonians don’t have angels, or rather they call them Archons different religions have different titles]Also according to T-A-G, Beragamos sprouted wings and flew to the Palaestra, so pretty sure he’s an angel.
It’s not clear to me if saints move up to become angels?
Perhaps if a saint hangs around long enough, does enough good work they get promoted, a little bell rings and they get wings?
Not sure, but it sounded like the angels/archons were getting drunk.
I do however KNOW that gods can be affected by normal alcohol. There are tons of stories (myths) about gods getting drunk off their buttocks and doing stupid things. It’s caused an awful lot of misery for the rest of reality.
In particular Phaestus’ family members (particularly Dionysus) are renowned for their drunken debauchery.
Bwah hah hah!
Now you know what I keep whispering in T-A-G’s ear every night before he goes to sleep!
It’s that very question! I knew you were a demon!
Plan B would be, keep same cover for 2nd Edition book 1, and another, new similar T-A-G generated cover for Book 2.
Of course since T-A-G has put money down (1/3 per cover for each book) earlier this week…that would really suck for him. He could swap them out when they eventually show up. The idea of the money up front, which was T-A-G’s idea, is to ensure it’s in the artist’s work queue.
Cover one is promised for end of May, book 2 cover for mid-June. This gives a solid timeline to shoot for, for T-A-G.
Of course, then there is the editor…need to be checking her schedule as well….she did a fantastic job on the 2nd edition, exactly what I’d hoped for. I think people will be pleased at her clean up.
I don’t know of any that do, demon wizards that is (human wizards most likely don’t know about the myopia).
Clearly, Exador should be able to do this as he fits the bill. Perhaps he does do this. It is curious how he got all those demons to fill the halls of the palace. And there were a lot of little ones, maybe he’s raiding grade schools for a very pliable army of demon servants?
It would kind of make Fagin (Oliver Twist) look like Santa Claus….
And you only thought you had a Hard Knock Life, little orphan Annie…wait until daddy Exabucks adopts you…
=d>
You got me!
You can read me like a book!
You are right, I do care about all those things. It is after all, the small pleasures in life that make it worth living, the screams, agony and suffering of others…
I guess I’m really just an old softie…softy? Hmmm….a romanticist?
The Prolegomenon in volume 2 has an incredibly terse bullet point history of major events. Probably not as detailed as you would like, it’s maybe half a page.
T-A-G is stingy with space due to Dead Tree Edition costs being per page based.
There is also lot of rehashing of the last chapter or two early on in volume 2, but it doesn’t cover a lot of what happened before the final few chapters.
I am in discussions with Antefalken (demon bard) to write a Broadway musical of the books, but that may take a while since neither he nor I know how this stuff is going to end.
Well you are forgetting the Hogg family from Texas.
The Hogg family were a very wealthy family in Texas, they named their daughter Ima.
[url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ima_Hogg]Ima Hogg….see Wikipedia[/url]
Of course everyone joked that her sister was Ura, as in Ura Hogg, but that is made up.
Will return shortly with more commentary. I gotta get to my local Abyssbucks before all the frapped democinos melt….(it’s hot here)
who would sell there soul? Well one person that comes to mind is:
[SPOILER]Vaselle.[/SPOILER]
Ooh, yes, good idea, recruit more souls to my mailing list and that will keep you on Earth longer. Although to be honest, I don’t see the thrill. Other than the fact that most demons don’t have access to Amazon…yet. So not a lot of luck getting the third and fourth books here.
I hear Bezos is planning to open an Amazon.abyss soon; I guess the problem is last mile delivery, isn’t it always? He’s gotta summon up enough reliable imps to deliver packages. Plus, as Rosver would point out, he’s gotta develop flame resistant packaging and cooling containers.
I’m afraid those packaging costs, for the Abyss are likely to mean we won’t get Amazon Prime any time soon…
Yeah!
I just wish the real world worked like this forum and the more you talked, the higher your rank…
If the Abyss worked that way, I’d be Lillith’s boss by now!
Hmm, sounds pretty standard for Japanese manga….
Personally, I find their tastes a bit vanilla for my liking, but to each his own. Not everyone can be as sick and depraved as me. It is an art form.
T-A-G is getting there, he’s just been tied up the last two weeks with day work, otherwise he’d probably be done and doing a first pass edit.
The hope is that Beta will start this month. That will be a few weeks, then off to editor for several weeks then publish. So target date for publication is end of June at this point, and that’s looking relatively good, unless the Beta Demons all vomit on the book and force a rewrite.
Your main complaint in beta was:
“I hate Jenn and Gastrope’s story; remove it; remove the Grove and the Nimbus or cut them down to almost nothing.” You also weren’t that happy with too much Hilda.
I did cut out the roller coaster. But cutting out the Grove and Gastrope’ and Jenn storylines sabotages stuff that comes later. I have to set things up for future events; otherwise there is no backstory or I have to spring it on people. That’s the [b]forest[/b]; you wanted me to start cutting down half the trees in it.
The POV’s were mentioned, but all about they are distracting us from Tom; not that they were confusing and certainly I saw no major complaints on the rehashing that said that exactly.
Here is the thing, Tom was stuck in a cave for several days while Talarius recovered and he figured out what to do. Now in book 1, he also spent a lot of time in the cave, and we sort of skipped over it in time and just said that he made furniture. We could do this because nothing else was happening. So time could jump a couple days for everyone.
This time, when he was stuck in the cave for several days, a LOT of other stuff was happening, a lot of stuff that was setting up future books and reactions from observers; the reaction scenes were things that lots of people had requested in various forums here and on Amazon and Goodreads had asked for; so I wanted to deliver. So while he is doing nothing, I covered the important stuff other people were doing.
What was I supposed to do during that time period? Have pages and pages of the guys in the cave navel gazing and having odd conversations with Tizzy and arguments with sleeping Talarius? I could have covered more Reggie, but that too would have been distracting to you.
You mentioned something in the review about the sex bothering you?
This is why I want you to try writing a book, a book who’s story you believe in and that you want to tell. I have constraints; the constraints of the story itself. You want me to toss them out because you don’t understand them. I can’t do this and still have “the story”
Now everyone wanted more action, more battles; I gave you all that. But you still weren’t happy.
Honestly, I had and have no idea what you wanted. You just told me what you didn’t want, which was like half the book. You don’t ever tell me what’s good; only what’s bad. So I have no idea what it is you actually want; just what you didn’t want. You are the reviewer of “No” but you can’t articulate why you say “no” you just say “no”
“I hate Hilda; I hate the Grove; it’s boring; it’s not going anywhere, it doesn’t add to the plot.” [b][i](FOREST ALERT–this is what you call the straw man)[/i][/b] I kept telling you yes it does add to the plot/story; you just can’t see it yet. But you said “cut it out anyway” and when I said I couldn’t; you didn’t work to make it better/more interesting you just went away.
So whatever, the books will march on and I will get feedback, input and even direction from those that want to provide it. But Rosver, it’s my story and I have to tell it. I will be guided by others, but I can’t please everyone. It just isn’t possible. If you don’t like it and don’t want to add constructive criticism that improves the book but only hack it to pieces, that’s your right. I’ll take it under advisement; but I’d really prefer you to be helpful and constructive and not so negative, defensive and curmudgeonly.
You have great insight and a keen mind, I just wish you’d use it to build rather than tear down.
Well judging by the fact that T-A-G seems to be spending a lot of time staring into MS Word and typing, ignoring this forum and others, I’d say he’s probably close to being on schedule, it may slip a bit depending on how much pre-beta full review/rewrite he does.
E.g. he tells me that he writes, then next day edits what he wrote yesterday before continuing. Doing that he’s pretty close to on schedule, but if he does a full book run through, then that could add some time.
Eh, I’d reserve judgement on that. He hasn’t let me proofread it yet.
I’m pretty sure he’s got the whole thing wrong…I think he’s deaf or something doesn’t seem to hear half of what I tell him…
I do indeed relish the screams, how else would I fall asleep at night?
It’s very hard to fall asleep when you are a demon, unless you’ve really exerted yourself or are regenerating. You need to be able to really truly fully relax, and your screams are one of the few things that truly calm me.
T-A-G is saying he’s close, he just hasn’t got much closer since last week….he keeps saying one more week for the first draft. That was last week, and instead of doing this, he’s been unnecessarily occupied in accumulating wealth via his “day job.” Sheesh. Talk about lack of priorities.
The break point is known, everything to get to the break point is known, it’s not that much, and then there are a few back parts/scenes to go back and fill in and then that’s draft one. He will probably then do a full read/edit and then it’s Beta time.
Beta time will hopefully be only a few weeks, then its editor time, which is probably 4-6 weeks assuming editor is not overbooked.
Then there is also the cover (for B1 2nd Ed, and B2 1st Ed), which right now is posing a bit of a problem as the artist keeps going MIA for weeks at a time….hope to have this done in parallel.
