Post-Fog Thoughts on the Craft

As I sit here in the aftermath of a foggy Colorado morning, listening to a few songs of the old Innerpartysystem, I was going over one of the passages in my new novel, Crown of the Orphic Queen, thinking about what it is I was trying to do at the moment due to the weather. I revisit songs from my youth sometimes, and while they don’t do what they used to for me at thirty-five years old, I will never forget where I came from. The city was popping with fog today, and it gave the day a certain feel that I love: the darker days of fall mornings.

The feel of this novel is darker and more gothic/Greek, so the fog gave me an idea to go over one of my passages and share what I was thinking when I wrote it many moons ago.

The chapter title suggests something that should be impossible, as ash results from burning. It does not burn itself; it is what happens afterward. Yet I wanted this paradox on purpose because the themes of the novel stand out in every aspect of the book itself.

Chapter titles, the flame of knowledge shown by the Torch of Knowledge at the beginning of certain chapters, and the secondary story at the end of those chapters all expand upon the dominant story. Not every chapter has one of these, but it is an important facet of the novel that I think will make for an important tale. I was inspired to do this by the idea of side quests, of all things.

In this passage, I describe Seph Flammeguarde’s arrival at Kefalonia.

Her family arrives by boat instead of at the airport because I wanted to demonstrate the character of the island itself as something mythical, as something beyond the realm of human understanding. I say that the landscape had been painted by the hands of a goddess, though I use earthly language to describe the island in tandem.

You’ll notice that the boaters arrive during a storm, as it says they were “floating like paper lanterns across the whims of the weeping winds,” where the lady of the winds threatens to crush them with a swaying movement of her own.

There is a dance there in the language. A bit of alliteration, but not too much. Not too conspicuous, in my opinion.

But I wanted the island to feel alive itself, just as the Elysian Academia feels alive. This is a myth, after all, told in the modern age.

Notice the water speaks to the passengers in a “soliloquy of the divine architecture of the natural,” meaning that something behind the scenes created this place.

I used a bit more alliteration in “a set of seminal secrets,” and then I played with the words even more by saying, “more wave-breaking than groundbreaking, but a purposed language all its own.”

This does two things as an author. It keeps you in the story by having a certain description, but it also plays on the words because there’s a little nugget that I snuck in there: I’m using purposed language to describe the story in my prose.

I don’t believe prose should be plain if you can help it—if that’s your style. Everyone has their own style, so don’t get me wrong. I feel that prose should be elevated a little.

If you’re going to attempt the craft of writing, then I think even at the word level, make things sing. Not too much, because if you go too far, it can turn purple. I just believe that prose should be worked on as much as the story itself, but that’s only my opinion. I write about 9,000 words in an hour using my voice and then spend about a half hour or so editing it, but the proper work comes in creating the shape of the story by changing that first-draft mess into something more meaningful.

That might take months or, as this novel has taught me, more than a year. I started this in summer 2025.

I know other people do it differently, and there’s no shade there. I do believe that plain-language prose works well sometimes. Look at Ernest Hemingway.

He was a minimalist, and it worked out very well for him.

Notice that the island is engulfed in a storm that’s not quite a hurricane but is still boisterous. I used the idea of the Korean game of gonggi to describe how the storm is affecting the people.

Now, I understand some authors might say, “Well, not everyone knows what that is,” but at the same time, I felt like it was the best description of how the passengers on the boats were being swayed around. Think of it as a game of jacks, only instead of a hand and pieces, it’s people and the storm itself.

I describe Seph’s father here with “arms the size of boulders set in motion” and “a steel face that rivaled unpolished stones in the heart of the land.” I use the of genitive far more than other ways, because I feel it lends itself to the shape of the prose better.

I wanted him to feel ethereal due to this story’s themes, but still be grounded in some way. That’s why I used earthly language to describe him. His name is Thundalinus Flammeguarde, and his wife also has the same type of language about her.

The reason I study my prose and go over it tens of times—twenty times, thirty times, sixty times, whatever it may be—is that I want to make the story work for what it is I’m trying to do.

Crown of the Orphic Queen is a meta type of narrative where the language itself is played with in such a way that, while a story is being told, there’s also a deeper level to the prose, kind of like the Hebrew concept of sod-level interpretations, where there is wisdom said plainly in the language but also a hidden meaning behind some of the words.

I enjoy doing this in all my stories. I sneak hints here and there of past works as well, though Crown of the Orphic Queen has the least of these of my novels.

I want Crown of the Orphic Queen to do the work of metafiction, not just a retelling of Persephone and Hades. Now, I want to respect the source material, so things won’t deviate too much, but you must remember that this is also the Orphic Hymns version of Persephone and Hades, meaning the hymn where she’s not so much a captive as the goddess of the underworld by default who rules over the world of the dead.

So, in this manner, I believe the author should rule over the world of this story in the same manner, where the narrator is playful because he can be, because the ruler of the story is the author.

To mirror the fact that Persephone and Hades rule the underworld, I wanted to make it so that the author also rules over a story about a simulacrum of the underworld.

Not all of my stories do things like this. I have very plain stories on the way too, such as The Candle’s Edge: In Lunar Glass, which will still be poetic, but the story itself is pretty plain, if I’m honest.

I won’t do meta-fictional narratives with every book I write. I just don’t think I need to do that. Just as the best music is written with cadence, variation, rhythm, key changes, etc., I want it to be the same for the gamut of my books.

I want my books to be sometimes plain, other times lyrical, and most times somewhere between the two, which is the happy medium that I think I’ve found.

It’s taken me six or seven years to find my author voice. I started writing my first novel in 2019.

It was a cold night in February 2019, and at least the clock had no thirteen. I remember it really clearly. I just decided, “No, you know what? I think I can tell a story.”

And that’s how Auminous came about.

However, while I’m proud of Auminous, my later works reflect the attempts at what I’m doing better than my first novel. I am always going to be proud of my first novel because it was the first novel I ever tackled.

It was also 147,000 words. It was a lot for one project. These books are near 80,000 words, but my point still stands.

I don’t think length has anything to do with the depth or intention of a story from the outset. I think you should tell the story in the length it needs to be. I don’t believe that a story needs to be a certain word count to do anything.

An epic fantasy can be epic at 90,000 words. It doesn’t have to be 200,000 words or more.

My point is, while I write my books this way, I know there’s no right way, but this is the right way for me.

I enjoy writing lyrical stories, and I’m not the best writer in the world. I don’t believe that. But I know that this is my voice, and I have found my voice.

And I think that’s the most important part of writing: writing in your voice, with the methods you know, with the experiences you have, and with the influences that come upon your work.

That’s how I want to write my stories.

I have many influences from all types of media, and sometimes outside of media too. My own experiences in my life and my memories often shape how I write my stories.

And speaking of memories, Crown of the Orphic Queen’s main theme is memory, but it’s also a paradoxical interpretation of what memory means, as you might notice from the chapter title. Ash results from burning, as I said before; it is not currently burning.

Seph and Hadrian are opposites. They don’t like each other at first, and the growth of their relationship throughout the novel is such that it’s earned instead of forced.

These facets make writing novels like this exceedingly difficult for me, but I want to see it through to the end.

The novel has a slight gothic quality to it—a gothic and Greek aesthetic simultaneously, as it is a myth—so I think it’ll work well for what I’m trying to do here.

The story releases in October, but I did not give a specific date in October after delaying it multiple times because I don’t like the idea of making promises I can’t keep. It really bothers me when I can’t keep a deadline, so I think from now on I will just announce a book and not have a set deadline—which is something I originally intended and went back on a few times.

After all, being independent means you can do whatever you want anyway, so I should follow through with that and just accept the benefits of being independent.

That’s not to say I wouldn’t take the right traditional contract, but I like the flexibility that independence offers you.

I am being diligent in getting these books to the right level, and while the story is essentially done, I just want the prose to sing.

I want the prose to do what it is I want it to do, and sometimes that means not releasing something, not rushing it out, and taking your time instead. I often underestimate what that might be. I underestimate the time something will take me, and I’ve got a bunch of other work on top of this going on, so it’s not always easy for me to do.

But I press on, as we all must.

Writing books makes me feel truly alive and happy in this world.

It is the one thing I want to share with the world.

But this is just a little analysis of what I was trying to do in this particular passage and why it does what it does. I play with the language in such a way because I believe language itself is also an art form, not just writing the words.

But again, windowpane prose is just as valid as lyrical prose. They both do the same thing in the end, and some readers will prefer one over the other, and vice versa, and that’s okay.

We’re all different.

All authors are different, all writers are different, and all readers are different. What matters at the end of the day is that we’re telling stories, reading stories, and sending stories out into the world.

And that makes me happy about the craft of writing.

Happy writing!