New Cover Art for Ghosts of the Past

Ruirik's really outdone himself this time.

Rather than talking about it at length, I'll ask you this: what do you see?

GotP 18 is almost done; I expect I might finish it tonight (caveat: it will not be out tonight, due to editing).

Comments

[djthomp]

Awesome.

[RoboRed]

I love it.

[Ruirik]

2145612
There's only about a dozen or so plot related items hidden in that picture

[Pega-ace]

2145687

Spotted: Shield pendant, skull, Rainbow's machete, jewel of some sort, paper + gem, black thing behind Foresight, bone (probably Steel Lining's), cresent moon, Ante Legionem carving on bottom of thingy, some words above both Twilight and Foresight's pictures, in Latin and Russian respectively, and the number 8 in Roman numerals below the mysterious long maned pony.

[Posted]

The obelisk in the background being built.

[Fillosof]

The text that adorn Twilight's frame is a tad bit unreadable.

I wasn't able to recognize the pony(?) in the upper middle frame, despite having a nagging feeling of almost remembering all the way through.
Please tell me that he/she/it has yet to appear in your stories, and I won't have to re-read all of them again.

P.S.
The absence of Roscherk, while understandable, still made me sad.

[biodude0711]

2147122
The text above Twilight is Latin for "Am I my brother's keeper?"
The pony in the upper middle frame is most likely Steel Lining.

2145687
Very good job, Ruirik! I love all the details.

[LoyalLiar]

2147449

Right on both counts. Steel hasn't had a haircut in going-on several months, in fact.

Out of curiosity, do you actually read Latin, or is your biblical knowledge base that solid?

[biodude0711]

2147609
Actually, I put the phrase into Google Translate.

[Ruirik]

2146349
At least one of those jewels is completely meaningless in every way.

Unless it isn't

[djthomp]

Oh god, that's probably Shining's skull, isn't it.

[LoyalLiar]

2147995
I can neither confirm, nor deny, the identity of the skull's former owner.

But if it were, someone would need to change their avatar...

[Zennyth]

2148098
Someone would eh?

[Fillosof]

2147449
2147609
Thank you, good sirs, but I was actually talking about the fact that the print seems smaller than on other frames, and unless you are opening the image in a separate tab/window it's hard to read. Or maybe my sight is pretty shitty, both options are equally viable.

Could it be that the exact circumstances in which the phrase was used in the Big Book is actually a terrifying foreshadowing for Twilight's story arc?
I can't actually imagine anything this can allude to happening, but hey, you are the creative person here.

[Zennyth]

Hey LL,

Out of curiosity, what does the editing process entail? Does it vary by chapter? Like, for instance, do some need just minimal changes from your first draft, but others need a lot of revamping? And how do you know when it's ready to go? Is it a general feeling that you're satisfied, or a consensus of approval from your editors/pre readers?

Is your work approached differently than when you are on the other side of the fence, pre reading for others?

I've always wondered what it actually meant when a writer said a chapter is off to the pre readers.

If you could sate my curiosity a bit, thanks a bunch!

[LoyalLiar]

2227488

Well, that's a fantastic question. I write in one Google Drive folder that's also home to Summer Lands, Wind & Stone, and the newest addition to the PoL-verse, Gold Wins Wars by Verlax. In that shared folder, as I'm writing, I often get feedback from Ruirik and The 24th Pegasus; it's hardly surprising since we Skype every-other day or so. Anyway, this folder is RIFE with spoilers, and the pathetic excuse for my story-outline, and the dark secrets of the PoL-verse; thus, most of the editors don't go in there. What I get from 24 and Ruirik, however, are usually the largest changes; stuff to make the 'verse work internally, or to play nice with Hurricane's story from thousands of years ago, or just "this entire character arc isn't compelling; cut it off early while you can and do something else with it."

Once I've finished a chapter, I move it to another folder shared with *all* the editors. It's here that I ignore the chapter until Keyesty has been through it on one pass--after all, I can't post it until the Russian text that I denote <<like this>> has been translated or transliterated (or both ) as required. During that time, I also let other editors go through for content or whatever. They're generally welcome to fix places where I blatantly misspelled a word, or outright omitted punctuation or something. For anything ambiguous or content-related, however, I prefer that they use the 'comment' feature of Google Docs to inform me.

I then apply the changes, inform the editors that I've been through it, and state when I intend to post the chapter so that a second pass can be made to catch anything left behind.

In the case of 18, btw, the reason I haven't posted it is because it has become 19, and I'm currently writing what will be posted as 18.

When I'm editing others, I usually do multiple passes until I run out of content fixes. I have something of a reputation as a harsh content-editor; I'm very mindful of tropes, and audience reception, and the 'marketing' of a story--("Your first chapter doesn't have any sort of a hook. Redo it."). I may have delayed Chapter 5 of Summer Lands by a week or two...

Anyway, hope that answers your question. Check out Gold Wins Wars with that link up there; I've edited that extensively. Verlax, the author, is Polish, so I help him a lot with English turn-of-phrase and narrative convention (though his English is phenomenal for a second language). It's a bit less of an action-oriented story than mine or 24's, but if you enjoy political maneuvering at all, you won't be bored.

-Loyal