Backstory

So today, in addition to doing some revisions, I finally sat down to hash out the backstory to my dwarves, which has been marinating in my mind for a few months now. I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out. It isn't quite as well-developed as that of the humans, but it has just as many seeds for great stories, which is half of what backstory is all about, in my mind.

I discovered after I finished it, however, that it has very little bearing on the events of my novel. The setting of the chapters that take place in the dwarflands has changed a bit, as has the character Len (well, not his character so much as his place in the world. Those of you who've read past drafts will scratch your heads and think "Was he really...?" when you read the finished version. The answer is no, he wasn't), but there are no huge changes to be made.

In the end I suppose that's good, and is yet another indicator that my novel really is getting close to finished, but it makes me feel a bit silly putting so much thought into something that has such a small immediate impact, even though I know it's important (the backstory does have much more far-reaching implications for book two, for instance).

In other news, I look at the sidebar of the blog and cringe. Have I really only posted once in all of May? Ouch. All I can say is that I promise to do better in the future, which shouldn't hold any more trips and internet interruptions, and that my goal is to have a solid 25-28 posts in June. We'll see how I do.