How Much is Too Much

If only Swords of Fire were published and available for everone to read. That would make posting about Madatar and Ardora easier. As it is, unpublished with only a bleak hope on the horizon of that ever changing, it is difficult for me to say much about them. You see, I don't want to say too much. I don't want to spill the beans, as it were. Knowledge about Madatar in particular is supposed to be progressive. But how can that be if I blab it all here? (Well, since nobody reads this, perhaps it doesn't matter.)

Last week I confessed that Madatar is revealed in Book II. What about Book I? Is Madatar there? Yes. Only we do not see him, hear him, or know what he is doing. Madatar is working from behind the scenes. Like every other character in Book I, Madatar is attempting to manipulate events to suit his purposes. It is not clear whether he is aware of Shatahar's plans to trap him at Khirsha's home village, but he does seem to possess a sense of urgency.

What I need, and have not had for years, is a regular confidant. I need someone to bounce ideas off to learn if they are any good. After I lost my original confidant I went for years alone. Then I thought I had found a new one. But she didn't want to learn about what was going to happen through discussing it with me. She wanted me to write it, so she could read and be surprised. She failed to understand my need to discuss both the future and the past in order to write the present. They are not separate stories. They are all part of the same flow and, as such, have to blend seemlessly into each other, the joining of hand to wrist to forearm to elbow to upper arm to shoulder. Each is a distinct part of the body, but there are no definitive lines separating them.

For now, take it that Madatar is very active in Book I, but hidden. Ardora is there, too. But she's even more hidden.