Introductions, introductions...

I've been contemplating starting a blog for some time, and now I have finally decided to take the plunge. The purpose of this blog is to share with you my thoughts and musings of my writings, and I may occasionally slip in pieces of my life here or there.

I am currently working on a Historical Fantasy novel series set in the time of Vlad the Impaler in Eastern Europe in what is now predominately Hungary and Romania. The story begins when Vlad the Impaler (Dracula) escapes his brother Radu's assault upon his castle above the Argeș River, his son in tow, through a secret passageway into the mountain of which his castle stood to the river a mile away. Only, when they prepare to ride off on horses that were waiting for he and his party, Vlad's horse shies from the noise of cannon fire and bucks off his son, losing him in the reeds, and leaves him behind.

From there the story continues with Vlad's son, whose name is also Vlad, and we join him on his journey through life. As good as a man Vlad wants to be, ever trying to not be like his hated father, always lurking in the shadows is an evil he cannot escape, and it drives him to be the kind of man he never intended to be. And the evil stalks him with blue fire in its eyes.

This story originally began many years ago and was only intended to be at best novella length. Well, 190,000+ words later, and two sequels started but never finished, the story grew into more than I had intended to write. This, however, was back before I knew how to write proper stories, and even less proper novels. I still have the original manuscript, and it makes me want to gouge my eyes out and cry tears of blood upon reading it (okay, that was a bit dramatic, but not too far off!). In 2007, I decided to go back to the crap that was my, at the time, "masterpiece", and joined a writing forum to have the first few pages critiqued. Needless to say, the responses were not as desirable as I had wanted, though they were at least nice enough to not tell me "your work sucks, why did you subject me to such horror?"

Anyway, I decided then I would learn to write, start reading more, because to learn to write you must start by reading the craft you intend to learn to see how the pros do it. I also joined another writing forum that was much more of a help for me than the first one. Without Absolute Write, my writing would still be a stinking chamber pot. I will never think of my writing ever as good enough, much in the same way I do with my art, and with that mindset I believe I will always look for a way to improve. Which is a good thing. Never settle for good enough. Always look for ways to be better. That is me, with my art, writing, my gardens--all of it. I want to be the best, and to try to reach for that goal, one must never settle for "good enough".

So the question--How long is this series going to be? Truth be told, I'm not sure. At first I intended it to be a trilogy, but it is looking like maybe now I will have to split the first into two. I may end up with four, possibly five books, but since I don't plan these things--I just let the story take me to wherever it wants to go--I can't be certain. I plan on four books, with a possible five. With my rewrites of the original story, I keep finding new subplots, new characters, and juicier things about my original characters and even the new that I hadn't known about. And all of this is making for a much longer read than I intended. Which I hope, is a good thing.