Blog: Two Years of The Tanuki Corner!

Technically, the two-year anniversary of the Tanuki Corner won’t be until Saturday, but since I’ll be going out of town on Sunday and the weekends are my writing days, I’m publishing this on Friday. Yay!

If you remember from last year, I updated this website, so it looked more put-together and sleek as compared to the previous design, which was more jankety and definitely beginner level. I like this design, so I’m keeping it, but I needed to figure out something to do for this year. I didn’t have a ton of good ideas, so I’ve decided to start posting polls on here. Some of them will be serious, but I plan for most of them to be fun. Hope you enjoy!

As for further plans concerning the blog, we’ll just see where life takes me. I plan to continue writing here for as long as I can, though as life changes, my posting schedule will probably also change. But we’ll see what happens.

However, the biggest announcement concerns that darn page that’s been up for a while titled, “The Terradraconis Saga”, which has said, “Coming soon,” for the past two years. Back in December, I did add some lore to it with the Tale of Myfanwy, but so far, the full stories haven’t yet been published. What’s the hold up?

Well, we’re getting closer to the books being done. I’m currently wrapping up the fifth book, which I expect to be done by fall at latest. From there, I will have to face my worst enemy, the bane of my existence: editing.

Okay, that’s not actually the bane of my existence; math is, but still.

The reason I haven’t even copyrighted the finished books yet because I’ve been writing them since I was 13 and, having grown up quite a bit over the past few years, my writing and the trajectory of the books have changed dramatically from what I originally intended. My original intent was to write a fantasy series based on world mythology that would serve as a non-woke alternative to the works of people like Rick Riordan. It would be something for an YA audience that would probably get darker as the series went on, appealing more to an older audience. While that was certainly true, it has now become darker than I could’ve imagined at 13 as the story has become more character driven instead of action driven and the impacts of political intrigue, the weight of relationships and grief, the strangeness of growing up, the heavy questions of morality and purpose, revenge, the cost of power, the question of rebuilding a broken empire, etc. all loom on the characters and demand to be explored.

Because of this divergence from the original plan, changes in literary taste, especially as it pertains to fantasy, and a need for perfection, this means that the editing process will be harder as I will not only need to remove typos and other things, but also do my best to remove as many plot holes as possible from the narrative and make sure everything is consistent, which could take another year or so. Not the best, but if I’m going to spend time and money getting it copyrighted, then figuring out how to self-publish the book to get into your hands, I want to be sure that I’m delivering quality. I also don’t want to release too much and have some jerk steal my characters and work. So, until I can get everything sorted out and published, enjoy my usual posts and the occasional short story.

Until next time,

M.J.