For my 150th “Tell Me” blog post, Joseph Brassey tells me how breaking narrative consistency can enhance a story even when it breaks your heart.
Everything is not going to be okay, and that is okay, because there is still a future yet to be seen. This is the statement that I’ve been using to describe the third book in my Drifting Lands series, Prince of Clay.
I did not set out to write a book with that tone. When my first publisher opted not to continue the series, the conventional wisdom I’d encountered most places in the industry that was trilogies were how a series ended, but I had never written the second book, Dragon Road, with that in mind. the Drifting Lands was originally conceived of as an episodic story about the crew of the skyship Elysium, journeying through an endless heaven dotted with floating islands. Sure, there were overarching plots, a slowly-manifesting myth-arc, but when I started the story in Skyfarer I hadn’t really taken into account that I was starting something without a pre-determined ending.
I’ll leave aside whether that was a mistake, because I’m not really convinced that anything in art is actually an error. There are industry conceits and there are ‘rules’ that are sort of commonly accepted, but sometimes a story just doesn’t follow the ones you want it to, and trying to force it into a box it doesn’t fit in will just make it less than it should be. When John Hartness decided to acquire Prince of Clay, the third book of the series, I was tempted to try and end things. Wrap them up with a neat little bow, but I very rapidly realized as I started writing the book that while Prince of Clay was an end—it wraps up many plot threads started in Skyfarer and closes a few character arcs—it was not the end. That was still a ways off, and I had something much bigger on my hands than I had initially anticipated.
So, like I had with Skyfarer and Dragon Road after it, I decided to tell the story that was both satisfying for me to tell, and that moved the arcs of the characters forward. And that meant that it wasn’t so much the conclusion of the series, but the end of its first movement. And that meant that it needed to be different. That it had to contain an element that the first two books had lacked. That element ended up being cost. The stakes of the first two Drifting Lands are high, and there are sacrifices and there are losses, but thus far they did not directly touch the core cast. I had not taken away the irreplaceable, permanently broken something, and given way for a new status quo.
And the thing about a good story is that the mid-point is generally when that really happens. I didn’t want to do that at first. I worried it would drive away people who were coming for something specific and would be angry if that something changed.
But as a dear friend is fond of saying, “that’s coward talk.”
So, if you’ve read the previous two Drifting Lands books, that means that I sort of preemptively owe you an apology. This is the book that changes things. That breaks what has been consistent up until now, and gives way to a broadening scope where the transience of everything from politics to personal relationships to life itself is laid bare. This is the book where consequences fly home to roost, plots culminate, and some stories close, even as others begin. It’s the dusk and the dawn, and it’s not the end of the Drifting Lands, though it is the end of the first movement in the symphony, like the prophet says in Dragon Road. There’s more to come, and while there are goodbyes and there are conclusions, the next day still comes.
Everything is not going to be okay, and that is okay, because there is still a future yet to be seen. In these times, that sentence has been giving me a lot of comfort. I hope it helps you too, and I hope you like the book.
Because there’s more to come, and to meet the future, we have to say farewell to the past. It’s not a perfect answer, but it is mine.
And so, we move forward. I hope you’ll come with me, for what’s next. We’ll make it, so long as we’re together. I truly believe that.
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Joseph Brassey lives in the Pacific Northwest with his wife, two children, and two cats. In his spare time he trains in and teaches Historical European Martial Arts in his native Tacoma. He has worked everywhere from a local newspaper to the frame-shop of a crafts store to the smoke-belching interior of a house-siding factory with very questionable safety policies.
