Burials and Rebirths
Greetings friends!
Last I updated this news blog I announced a new series called Witch/Hunter. This is a story I’ve been working on in one form or another for a very long time. And it is still ongoing, though its format has somewhat changed. What was originally intended to be a weekly webnovel series as is common for this site grew and grew in the writing of its first draft and has now become a book that I mean to publish. That’s right! An honest to god book!
I found as I was finalizing the first draft in April that the story needed something more to work better. I needed to add a whole middle section to allow me to structure it better and to fully flesh out the themes and such. After finishing the first draft I took all of May off to rest and scheme. I turned 40 (oh good god!) and got to participate in some fun projects during this down period. But all the while I was plotting and scheming. Now all of this is coming to fruition.
As I had mentioned in the past I was growing a bit tired of writing for Corpus Okuza. I’m not saying I’ll never touch it again, but the series being set in a DnD world with DnD rules and high level magic, made it really hard to write in. Or at least made it hard to write the type of stories I really wanted to write. I’ve written many series in the past that I have either finished or abandoned and along the way I’ve gathered a number of plot elements and aesthetics that I really like. Many of these can be found in Corpus Okuza and on this site’s original series Hex Noir. But for every one of them I found myself not very happy with what I had made. But alas, I’ve been plotting and scheming.
I’ve decided I want to reboot the Hex Noir world. Take apart what worked and transfuse it with new things that are more along the line of what I like to write about. I’m keeping the name Hex Noir, but this rebirthed series of tales will have nothing to do with the old story, though they will have many similar things. Late 1800s and early 1900s vibes? Check! Low fantasy supernatural things? Check! Quasi vampiric characters called warlings? Check and check!
If you haven’t guessed it by now, this new Hex Noir series and Witch/Hunter are going to take place in the same world and so certain elements of Witch/Hunter are being rewritten and changed as I start the second draft to fit this newish world better.
The Corpus Okuza series will be sidelined for the time being under Other Tales and for at least the next year the original Hex Noir series is going to be taken off the site so that it won’t be confused with the new series. Eventually I will make it available under Other Tales as a kind of legacy series.
So what is to be expected in terms of content for the future? Well, I’m glad you asked, dearest reader. While Witch/Hunter is being written the site will host an ongoing series that will have many similarities to The Abyss Stares Back. This series will focus on an agent going around, solving murders and hunting down supernatural creatures. We will have weekly chapters and when each story arc of the series ends I’d like to release an audio version of the arc to be listened to in podcast form or watched with visuals provided through Unreal Engine as I have done in the past. But while the series is coming out with weekly chapters I’d also like to make videos where I talk about about the lore of the world and develop some ideas to drum up some excitement.
That’s the plan at least. I am of course a working man and it can sometimes be hard to muster the will power and energy to work on things after work, but I will try my hardest to keep it up. Though I have probably written over a hundred thousand words this year of material I’ve discarded to get to where I am now, creatively speaking.
I hope you’ll follow along, dear reader, and hope you’ll get excited about this with me. We’ll have many tales of woe and dark corners to explore together.
Also if you like to begin exploring the aesthetics of this Hex Noir revival project then I invite you to scroll through the pinterest board I’ve created for it:
