Contains spoilers for the prequel Dark Desires and the sequel Rise of the New Masters:

So this semester it’s “nose to the grindstone even more.”  I find myself dissatisfied on my direction for the The Age of Merrik sequel (Rise of the New Masters).  Okay, so I’ll just go out and say it.  I like Zae’s (Zaedrif’s) character and in some ways I’m not in the mood to kill him off.

Alas, what do you do when you have a large character cast?  In all the The Age of Merrik: The Anointing versions, I had Cle’an as a central character for a small portion of the beginning of the novel, then as per Merrik’s orders he leaves.  In comes Jierin (I love this name.  I’m the one who made it up and I love it–and my screenwriting class loved it when I worked on The Age of Merrik screenplay.).  The only difference between the versions is that in the third version, Cle’an plays a minor role in bringing back Elisha to Tyera.  I also use him to explain more of the Rikan-Tyera backstory and to expand on Nathan and the Fall of Nemea. Though I really don’t go into the Fall too much.  I figure it is quite a large backstory, one more suited for other novels.  It’s directly addressed in Dark Desires (yes, doesn’t this title sound like a romance novel?) and will be addressed more in The Age of Merrik: Rise of the New Masters.

And I had to use Cle’an to bring up Nathan yet again.  Nathan is beyond a minor character.  He’s like a legendary hero who is losing the retelling of his heroics.  He’s a character mentioned in passing, but I certainly do it on purpose.  I mention him in the first chapter then later when Cle’an is in Reyenas.

Speaking of Reyenas, I just found a file I had worked on for my reference library (a precursor my previous wiki), where I have a partial outline of the events of The Age of Merrik: The Anointing.  I’ll have to post it to the wiki.

Oh well, I’ll just have to flush out the Dark Desires and Rise of the New Masters plots some more and let go of Zaedrif.  I think I am so fond of him because of my plans for the original Zaedrif character in version one of the novel.  The official spelling for his name is with a joined “ae” but for ease of use in making a searchable blog and wiki, I will write names without the joined “ae” and without the accented “i” in Serafin.  Otherwise, if you conduct a laymen search without the joined letters or accented “i,” the results will not come up.