Hero of Fire
Page 29
I succeeded in overwhelming myself and throwing chaos into my works.
Not only that, but I am in the process of leaving my job as an engineer for good. In fact, at the time I’m writing this, I have less than two weeks left until I will be done with work and then will be moving out of state to a house on a nicely wooded piece of property where I can write full time.
This means for at least the last several months, I have been preoccupied with logistics for the impending end of my employment and future move. All of that makes it very hard to eke out the time necessary for planning, structuring, and writing.
I find that though I still write every day, I can’t achieve the flow I should. Just about the time I would fully immerse myself in the world in which I’m writing, I would have to stop and take care of mundane responsibilities.
All of that is to say that I had a difficult time writing this book.
Don’t even get me started on how I had to rearrange things completely during my initial self-edits. I don’t usually do that. It was just plain ugly.
Suffice it to say, I was not feeling great about the book when I finished it. During my self-edits, as I tried to massage and polish it, a few little rays of light shone through, making me feel less horrible, but not giving me too much hope.
On my last self-edit (just before I sent it to my editor for her first pass), I was thinking that maybe the book was mildly entertaining, if not still full of bad prose and ineffective story decisions.
When I got the first of my editor’s comments back, though, she said how she thought I had hit a sweet spot and that she hoped I was going to write more books in this world.
What? I mean, ok, it may not be as bad as I thought it was, but write more books? In this world?
I enjoy complex worlds, as anyone who has read my Harmonic Magic series or the first book in my Song of Prophecy series can attest. Telusium, the world in which the Order of the Fire series is set, is not complex at all. I didn’t invent any languages for it, there are no histories spanning thousands of years, no real mythology or pantheons of gods, none of the really cool stuff I like.
But she liked the world and the story. And she has read (and edited) more books than I have probably ever seen, in many genres. I respect her opinion.
So it got me thinking. I’m still not committed to writing more than the one trilogy, and probably a novel or novella in the world to give to my newsletter subscribers, but I’ll keep the idea in the back of my head and see how the books are received.
At this point, book 1 has only been out for a week, so it’s too soon to tell if a lot of people like it.
One thing I can say is that after reading through it completely again, addressing all the comments my editor made, and changing some things around, I’m actually pretty happy with the book. I usually find all the faults with everything I write, never really happy with how the books turned out. I still see many faults in this one, but I can say that it’s one I’d be proud to recommend for anyone who likes sword & sorcery books and a strong, heroic, kick-ass female main character.
When it comes down to it, I’m pretty sure I’d be happy with this read if someone else had penned it and I found it as a reader.
I can’t really ask for anything better than that.
About the Author
A chemical engineer by degree, air quality engineer by vocation, certified dreamer by predilection, and writer by sheer persistence, P.E. Padilla learned long ago that crunching numbers and designing solutions was not enough to satisfy his creative urges. Weaned on classic science fiction and fantasy stories from authors as diverse as Heinlein, Tolkien, and Jordan, and affected by his love of role playing games such as Dungeons and Dragons (analog) and Final Fantasy (digital), he sometimes has trouble distinguishing reality from fantasy. While not ideal for a person who needs to function in modern society, it’s the perfect state of mind for a writer. He also writes young adult action & adventure under the pen name Eric Padilla, and lives in Southern California, though he would like to be where there are more trees.
Website:
pepadilla.com/
E-mail:
pep@pepadilla.com
Also by P.E. Padilla
Adventures in Gythe:
Vibrations: Harmonic Magic Book 1 (also available as an audiobook)
Harmonics: Harmonic Magic Book 2 (also available as an audiobook)
Resonance: Harmonic Magic Book 3
Tales of Gythe: Gray Man Rising (also available as an audiobook)
Harmonic Magic Series Boxed Set
The Unlikely Hero Series (under pen name Eric Padilla):
Unfurled: Heroine is a Tough Gig (Unlikely Hero Series Book 1) (also available as an audiobook)
Unmasked (Unlikely Hero Series Book 2)
Undaunted (Unlikely Hero Series Book 3)
The Shadowling Chronicles (under pen name Eric Padilla):
Shadowling (Book 1)
Witches of the Elements Series :
Water & Flame (Book 1)
Song of Prophecy Series :
Wanderer’s Song
Order of the Fire Series:
Call of Fire
Hero of Fire (this book)
Legacy of Fire (out May 2019)