Shifting Things Correctly: Superstructure
An author is the god(ess) of his or her own story.
We create life—we take life away, and we put people through hell so that they get a taste of heaven after it’s all said and done.
Being an author, strangely, gives you a taste of what God must feel like when dealing with the characters He’s created on planet Earth.
Numinous: The Golden Tunists will be the canonized sequel to Auminous.
The story I wrote last summer and fall won’t be canon anymore.
The books all have a thematic superstructure and must have a certain spirit or quirkiness to them.
Numinous is a little side-story type of novella.
I don’t feel it is up to the same standard as Auminous or my Orchestrylus Odyssey series.
It has weird ideas like the Candlelight Man (master of the Candles of Elixas) and introduces the Darcis as an enemy even to the Auminous Sect, but it lacks that certain panache that Auminous has.
It’s like calling a monarch butterfly a queen-regnant butterfly instead of having the kingly quality of the confidence of its name.
A king doesn’t have to prove he’s a king. He simply is a king.
The story will know what it aspires to be and will be sure of itself from the outset.
It won’t flirt with being “mid” (as the kids say) anymore and take those bold steps it needs to in carving out a worthy sequel.
Auminous is a novel that plays with Christian fiction tropes and flips them around. I think most Christian fiction is campy, negative (in taking risks), and, honestly, not quite at secular entertainment’s level (not in all cases, and I’m sure it’s also a taste thing).
Gothic horror is a fun genre to write. We have misted moonlight, manors, and ghostly monsters—and it takes a special taste to appreciate the underworlds of gothic-horror fiction.
Why shouldn’t a book written with biblical themes dabble in such things?
The Bible has many horrifying events, bloodshed, explicit sexuality, and all sorts of things that, frankly, aren’t censored.
Being “PG” isn’t on my list of things to do.
I will leave that to the Max Lucados of the world.
I want my novels to come out exactly as I envision them, and I believe now that I should write every novel as though it shall be my last.
This means no messy first drafts, artisanal approaches, and polish beyond what I consider polished.
By 2028, I’ll have written:
Numinous: The Golden Tunists
Criminous
Luminous: By Blood and the Stars
Acuminous
Each novel has overarching thematic elements in its body and even name, tying them all together as one series.
I’d like to finish the books as a quintet, though the door is open for side-story shenanigans in the future.
Here’s hoping it works out.
