Wolf

On a recent podcast appearance, I brought up Patrick Rothfuss a few times.

More than that, I mentioned that I’m making a study of his two novels. There are reasons that go into this beyond the writing of a novel that I may get into someday, but much of this concept of layering that I’ve been talking about with this novel comes from my study of these two novels.

While I don’t think I write much like Rothfuss, I also think he may be the writer I’m most like, in very narrow ways, though these narrow ways are broad in scope and lead us, as always, back to James Joyce.

One thing driving the mystery of the novel is the Chandrian, these ancient demons, cursed to ever wander the earth.

Since Twilight of the Wolves is a story about curses, I thought I could bring my own kind of Chandrian into this world.

Now, I don’t intend them to be like Rothfuss’ Chandrian, in part because my world is far more diffuse. There’s less commonality between places, between nations, and so cultures are far more dissimilar in my world than they are in The Kingkiller Chronicles. My conception of power and gods is also significant different.

But I like this concept, in a broad way. An ancient evil. I mean, it’s the kind of thing fantasy has been built on! As much as I find myself always trying to write against tropes, to bump out the sides of the genres I play in, I’m trying to do something a bit more commercial here. Though, of course, I’m doing this in my own anticommercial way, as I talk about in that podcast episode of Broken River Radio.

So that’s what I accomplished today. Planting seeds, letting them bloom a bit. And now we’re on, ever moving onward in this rewrite of the novel. When I reach the final chapter that I wrote two months ago, we’ll be able to once again sprint forward towards the ending, towards a burning orchard, towards a child running, towards a dying wolf and a curse in wait.