Book I - The Beginning

I'm supposed to talk about Madatar and Ardora today. I don't want to. So nyah.

Well, if you really want me to, I will - but you'll have to post a comment. So, because right now you don't know what I'm doing (I have often been accused of the same thing myself) I am going to talk about The Prologue. Oooo! (how is that spelled, anyway?)

For more than thirty years Swords of Fire has begun with a prologue. You should have seen the size of the original. It was as a long as a full chapter. It explained a great deal of what happened to The Great Sea prior to the book even beginning. At the time my sister-in-law (I'll call her "B", because it's short and sweat, like she is) was my Reader and Ideas Wall. Everything I wrote, or wanted to write, regarding The Great Sea I bounced off her first. If she liked the idea, we would sit and discuss it out for an hour or more. If she didn't like it, I kept rewording it in hopes she would change her mind. Sometimes she did, but not always. Anyway, B didn't like a monstrous prologue and kept having me whittle it down a few pages at a time until I was able to say everything in a single page of poetic prose. Then she was satisfied.

I have rewritten that page several times over the ensuing years, changing this and that to make it better say what I wanted it to say. Until now. In my latest revision of Book I, the one in which word reduction was the primary concern, the Prologue went away. I'm not sure if that was a good idea or not. There was important information there. Now I have to find other places to insert it. Oh, well. I knew I was hardly finished editing. I'm still forty thousand words over my limit. Besides, after the pasting (I like paste - used to eat it in kindergarten class) I took over my New Beginning at Evil Editor's blog (http://evileditor.blogspot.com) I realized the language and style I was using just isn't going to help get this thing published. Pity. However, for your reading pleasure, and because I hate to see it just go away, here is the last version of Book I's Prologue. I've bolded the portions I believe I need to incorporate in the narrative.

The Great Sea. An ancient artifact of the High King, hanging in darkness for time uncounted. Lifeless, its ring of earth remained coated with a thick, unforgiving layer of ice until the Fire came, slipping into it like a finger into a ring. From the Fire came warmth – and life. The waters teemed with it.

The Great Sea. Playground to the Children of Fire, offspring of the High King’s thought. The Children played upon the waters and drew land from its depths. Life spread from the water to the land, and from the land to the air. All the Sea was covered in life. And the High King made the Free Peoples, beings of limited stature, but possessed with creative thought and power. The land, the air, the water: it would be their own to share.

The Great Sea. Battleground to the Children of Fire, for not all were willing to share. The Sea was ravaged and torn, bringing Death, the last to arrive. The High King stayed the wars of his children, and He bound them to the Sea to repair what they could. But the Sea would be theirs no more. It would be given to the Free Peoples – when they were ready. The sign will be this: One comes, the Madatar, who will have the power of Fire, which is the power of the High King. Thus far he is hidden, and by many Free People forgotten. But the Children of Fire have not forgotten. To the Faithful, Madatar is their own hope of redemption, and they seek to help his rise to power. To the Unwilling, he represents judgment, and they seek his destruction. But he is still hidden.