Finally, work on Sword of the Nation’s fourth draft is complete, and with it, I can declare the manuscript ready for the next phase in its road to publishing.

A fourth and final draft was something I decided to do a few months after having completed the third iteration, largely in part to the still ongoing lockdowns that stranded me here. I suppose it happened for a reason, because this allowed me to go full in depth and polish everything to the best of my ability, and the end result is substantially better than any prior iteration.

I wasn’t expecting to take almost six months to finish it, but I once again found myself wrestling against a series of obstacles and unforeseen circumstances, from month-wide internet outages to crumbling apartment repairs and even some health issues — but enough excuses, I am feeling very proud of myself that I was able to complete the final draft, because Sword is finally where I wanted it to be.

The third draft was mostly about fixing the mistakes I made with the first and second ones, while making some changes to certain aspects of the world and its tech. With this final draft I took an even deeper dive, completing the vision started with the third draft and making sure everything flowed better while applying some feedback that I received from the First and Second public previews of the draft.

I am confident that this is the one, it all flows better, it’s more down to earth, the action was once again improved, the weakest parts were completely revamped from the ground up, and while I made zero changes to the core plot, I feel like it now ends on a higher note. Grammar has been substantially improved—again, to the best of my limited ability.

If you still haven’t checked it out, you can grab a preview of Sword’s unedited draft (Prologue and 9/12 chapters) by clicking here.

What comes next?

That’s the million Bolivar question ($0.57 as of Feb. 11th).

I am in the same spot as I was in May of 2020 when I completed the third draft—except this one is much, much more polished and fleshed out. An editor and a commission for Sword’s cover art are what I should start focusing on, however, there’s the still unresolved matter of my future, and my ongoing quest of escaping out of this country with my brother.

The funds that I have been slowly but surely been able to save over the past years are first and foremost for our plane tickets, visa costs, and other escape expenses, I cannot and will not touch them for anything else because I don’t know how much I’ll end up spending, considering that I may very well have to arrive at another country first to apply for our visas—and all that ain’t cheap.

There’s another issue, I currently do not have a valid form of identification that works outside these borders (a passport), while the U.S. Government allows expired Venezuelan passports for visa application and for entry into the country, private companies, such as Amazon, do not.

My second passport extension is paid and being processed, just need to wait for it now. Passport offices only work every other week, which slows things up.

Additionally, I don’t have access to certain documentation (tax etc.) that Amazon Kindle Publishing requires of its authors, that is very well something that I may not be able to solve so long as I’m here.

I’m sure that all of this is something that I’ll get to figure out and solve soon, I’m definitely gonna need help for this — there’s only so much I can do from here.

In the meantime, I feel less stressed about taking so long to work on Sword, and I can avail myself of this ‘lull’ period between getting my passport and my visa to focus on a lot of pending stuff that I wanna do and learn, including but not limited to memes, some entertainment, my reading backlog, exercise, as well as pumping up more content for my site in the next days/weeks and being more consistent with it.

Furthermore, it is my plan to continue to release more lore previews in a more steady manner. I have two on the backlog right now: A preview of the Gestalt Arsenal, and one dedicated to the Nasivern’s religion, which is centered around their mother deity, Sollente.

Stay tuned!

The Crimson Dream, outlined

As I was working on finishing Sword’s final draft I began to prepare a simple page outlining my vision for this saga (Sword, Sins, Soul, and beyond) and my plans for it in a simple and straightforward manner.

You can find it by clicking “The Vaifen Saga” at the top menu on this page, or by clicking here.

Sinning ahead

I will be starting work on Sins first draft very soon, the goal is to have substantial progress on it by the time Sword gets edited and closer to publishing so that there’s not a huge gap between releases.

Sins’ rough outline exists in my head and on a bunch of scattered notes, it’s time to start organizing them. I already am certain on how I wanna start Sins, and how I wanna end it, with most of the key moments already decided.

I will have more concise info about Sins in the next months.

My future remains as uncertain as it was when I finished the third version of Sword and began work on the final version, and yet, unlike back then, I  don’t feel melancholic and down, on the contrary, I feel extremely hopeful and optimistic.

The journey continues, and every day I get one step closer to fulfilling this dream of mine. You have no idea how much your support has meant to me over the course of this journey, it’s thanks to you all that I’ve been able to make it this far.

I can’t wait for the day when you all get a physical copy of Sword in your hands and all these characters are bought to life in your imagination. Sword is but the first chapter in a long saga that I’ll be building over the next years.

God bless you all, and once again, thanks for everything.

-Kal


2 Comments

Lockdown 21: February, Biosafe Carnival | ckaleb[dot]com · February 28, 2021 at 7:24 pm

[…] have chosen to focus instead on my own things instead, such as finishing Sword’s draft, getting my passport extended, getting sidetracked by some minor health issues, household […]

MMXXI: Part One | ckaleb[dot]com · June 30, 2021 at 5:59 pm

[…] of February 2021, Sword of the Nation’s fourth draft is complete. This is the most complete version of the story that I wanna tell, and I’m very proud of having […]

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