They're shiny!

I've been working my new trilogy for probably a year and a half now, though in the beginning it was a very different concept. I wrote three chapters in quick succession, lost the inspiration to continue (something just wasn't right about it), and the plot bunny scurried off into the distance. But, having seven years of experience with this kind of stuff beneath my belt, I saved the files and tucked them away neatly in a folder, waiting to be rediscovered and re-realized as absolutely brilliant. (Of course they're absolutely brilliant, though I may be a leetle bit biased.)

I don't mind sharing an excerpt from the prologue I wrote then, because it does a good job of explaining my approach and really, this was a good beginning but I probably won't be using any of it in the actual story!

Since the first moment I laid eyes upon that elf, he’s had a habit of appearing abruptly and disappearing just as suddenly. At first when I would see him, he would be a disheveled young elfling, hair sticking out at odd angles and clutching at his training bow. He had worn a wicked smile on his face and would duck behind the nearest and most convenient statue in the gardens, clearly hiding from pursuers who would capture him and drag him back to his lessons. Shortly after his appearance, two unsympathetic and entirely anticipated elves would appear, spot their charge, and do exactly what they always did: drag him back to his lessons. His high-pitched yells of protests and whiny complaints would always echo around the halls for all to hear.

Into his adulthood, there came less of him in the halls and more of him on the fields. No longer could he leave the halls, since he was hardly ever home. His place as one of the captains of the army of the wood meant that he had a duty, and that duty, coupled with the crown on his brow, held precedence over any of his childish tendencies. He seemed to forget, or at least put aside, his days of tomfoolery over the years. Usually when I was sure that he had given it up altogether, I would catch him staring longingly at the door and would know who was really behind that well-mannered and composed royal façade.

Obviously that's not the entire prologue, but it gives you an idea of what I began with and where I wanted the story to go. While the premise of the story is still the same (Legolas dealing with compulsivity and other issues to do with discomfort in his own skin) the scale of the story is now much larger, spanning three full-length (at least 50,000-word) stories that are taken from three different points of view and while they will all be sufficiently standalone, they will be more easily read and understood in order. It is an entire new collection of characters, who, already, are some of my favorites.

In the interest of creating something as detailed and realistic as possible, I will be writing one-shots or short stories to do with my new family of characters in order to make sure that I am being consistent and thorough as possible. I will be posting these as I go along and not, likely, with any kind of planning involved. They'll probably be released as I see the need to write them.

What has been gnawing away at my brain recently has been the fact that, while I have these wonderful stories planned, I don't have any titles! So the other day, I spent a good deal of time working on the them. I wrote down what I wanted each of them to portray, what aspects of each story I wanted them to emphasize, and consulted what seemed like hundreds of words in my thesaurus before I came to a collection of titles I approved of. The more I looked at them and thought about them, the more appropriate they seemed.

So without further ado, The Metamorphoses Triology: The Shift, The Battle, and The Inheritance.

They're shiny, they're new, and they're perfect.

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Also, I have finished writing the Guardian's of Time one-shot, which I have titled The Loss, though I will perhaps change it. That will be posted by the end of the month!