Currently my book series, Mortal Realm Witch, is expected to have 5 books in its main series, 3 series companions, 1-2 guidebooks, 2 free e-book stories, 1 cheap e-book, and 1 comic book style video. The free stories will also be available as PDF’s, and the free stories and video will be featured in the extra’s section on www.mortalrealmwitch.com.
You may know this information already but what you probably don’t know is that the Mortal Realm Witch series almost didn’t get written. The first story in Mortal Realm Witch: Learning About Magic titled: Mortal Meets Magic, may be the story that starts the series, but once it was nothing more than an unfinished project.
Mortal Meets Magic, originally titled, Mortal Realm Witch, was just a story I began writing one summer at my Grandma’s house. I was bored so I took out a sketch pad/notebook that I had. It was half blank space at top for drawings and the bottom half was lined for words. When I took it out I actually had no plans on writing a story. Along with that notebook I also took out a normal sketch pad. After spending some time trying to decide what to do I eventually chose to use the sketch pad and began drawing. The drawing became a girl and her cat. I then added a broom into the picture and made it so that the girl and the cat looked as if they were on the broom. I didn’t actually draw it very well so if I were to ever find that drawing I’m sure it would look different from what it was intended to.
After making the drawing, I thought I was done, but then I added some stars into the picture. Was I done this time? Well I was, with the drawing anyway. While looking at the drawing for a while then suddenly had an idea for a story based on the drawing. At the time many of my stories happened based off a drawing I did. Upon getting the idea I grabbed my sketchbook/notebook.
As I began writing I decided that the girl would be a witch and the cat, which was black, would be her familiar. Somewhere in the writing of the story I decided to change the cat to a Golden Retriever and just make black cats my witches favorite type of cat. The story was about halfway finished when I closed the sketch pad/notebook. The reason was that it was close to time to go home.
At home I unpacked all my stuff and put it away. I don’t know exactly where I put everything but after doing so I never thought about the story again.
A year later I was cleaning my room and found the sketch pad/notebook. I was just going to throw it away but instead, for some reason, I opened it and read what I had written. Although the illustrations on the top half weren’t very good, I really liked my story. At the time I had also found another story I had partially written, hated it, and threw it away. This one however I put aside after reading and that night I actually finished it.
Because of this one story I began coming up with ideas for others based off of it. By the time I was done…or thought I was done I had written enough stories for a whole book. Later more ideas began forming and before I knew it I had enough ideas for three books. This is when Mortal Realm Witch became a series and the first story got titled Mortal Meets Magic as Mortal Realm Witch was now the series name.
Mortal Realm Witch was going to be a 3 book series until I had a dream. In this dream was a character that reminded me of DWW, only I knew it wasn’t her. This character seemed to be a bit more adventurous and seemed to be the type of girl who ended up in trouble a lot. There was also a female wizard in this dream that appeared to be the friend of this new witch. This is when Book Four, The Adventures of DWW2 became the next addition to the series.
If you want to, you will get the chance to learn more about the dreams I had that helped me create this books and others of mine, which I actually consider the ones that get written this way to be my best books, when I publish my book with the working title of: Just Dreaming: Dreams I Had and the Stories They Created.
While I was working on Book Four, Three was being edited and ended up being almost long enough for two books. Because this would make the third book cost twice as much as the first two in the series, changes needed to be made. When I first wrote Book Three it was made into three big stories: The Familiar Stories, Time’s Up?, and Realms Unite? What I did to solve the length problem was to take The Familiar Stories and Time’s Up? out of Book Three and place them into their own book which would become Mortal Realm Witch‘s first series companion: Tales of Familiars.
After solving this problem I returned to working on Book Four where I discovered a new problem; I couldn’t come up with an ending for the book! While considering my problem I did come up with a series ending but it in no way would fit into Book Four and no matter what I did I couldn’t get it to work. The reason was that Book Four wasn’t the end. There was still one more big story that needed to be told!
A little bit earlier while working on Book Four, I had also decided to make a Guidebook. The reason was that I introduce many Other Realm creatures throughout the series that would be impossible for me or anyone else to keep track of. Upon working on this I began creating some new creatures for the book as well as writing some stories featuring some of these creatures. Like Book Three I ran into the same length problem and split it into two parts; The Guidebook, and another series companion: Tales of Other Realm Creatures. The Guidebook came to be titled: The Guide to Other Realm Creatures and will feature full color drawings of every creature in the Mortal Realm Witch series as well as some all new ones. In the book each creature will have a description that includes; appearances, abilities, habits, the world they come from, and a little more. It will either be one Guidebook or two depending on the cost to print the book and what I would have to sell it for. If it is still too expensive this way it may just be an e-book and not in print.
While working on Book Five I ended up writing something about Asantra’s past. Asantra is DWW2. I then realized that some people, including myself, may want to know more about the things I talk about, but I didn’t want to add the stories into Book Five because I felt it would distract too much from the main story that I was telling. Thinking about it this problem would also occur if I put it into Book Four. While thinking about Book Four I found some things that to me, would be interesting to expand upon regarding Asantra. I then decided to write a book about Asantra’s younger days. This book is called: Tales of Young Asantra and is the second companion book in the series, even though the idea and stories for Tales of Other Realm Creatures came first. The reason for this is the timeline in which the stories happen and where they best fit into the series.
Finally I had all the books that were going to be in the series, but then in creating my first bookmark featuring Trillman, I began thinking about bookmarks. I came up with an idea for a story featuring Air Raid, the dragon from the Dragon Familiar story in Book One, and his witch Ally. Both of which also have a large role to play in Book Three. My first thought was to make a second bookmark with a short comic strip on it, but what I came up with was a short comic which was too long to fit on a bookmark. Instead of becoming a bookmark I started creating a longer version of my idea, turning it into a full length short story. This story will be presented as a comic book style video.
Next I came up with a story about DWW, who is first in Book One, and is one of the only characters who appears in every book in the main series. I found a few errors in Book One and there are some things I wrote in Book Five that I felt needed some explanations so an origin story of DWW, called: Allura’s First Magical Discovery, was created.
Very recently I got the idea to let Sampson, the villain that first appears in Book One’s story: DWW on the Witches Council?, tell his story. This is an origin story of Sampson as well as his point of view from all the stories he is in where he explains what he did, how he did it, and why. This will be added as a bonus story in Book Five.
I also very recently got the idea for a second free story about Ally and DWW. In Book One, you are given the impression that the witches both know each other, but prior to Ally’s story there is no mention of her. This led me to wondering how they met and to the creation of the upcoming story: Ally & DWW, which will take place just before the events in Wolf Magic.
Lastly, I came up with two stories about Trillman. The first of which is about how Trillman became a familiar. You may have read part of it previously on this blog. The story is part of what will be a cheap e-book featuring two stories about Trillman. The second story will be about what Trillman did between the events of Books One and Two where he isn’t heard from for a while. The e-book is currently being titled: Trillman’s Tales.
So, this is how the Mortal Realm Witch series got created. It’s hard to believe sometimes that it was once an unfinished project. As you know not all projects are as lucky as Mortal Realm Witch, which got it’s chance to be finished.
Now I want to ask you, do you have any unfinished projects? If you do, what is it? And do you honestly feel you will ever return to the project and finish it?
Also if you have had an experience like mine, what were you doing and how long did it take you to return to and finish the project?
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