Coera

Anne was reading through this site and had a few questions on various entries, which, per her request, I'm answering here. I'm terrificly happy to have someone reading through here, especially Anne, so whatever I can do to oblige, I will!

I have to note, though, that while I am hoping to have comments and critiques, this blog is mostly just an online repository of notes for a bunch of different writing projects, so if it makes sense enough for anyone to comment on, that's due to their intelligence, not my organization!

Anne said:

This helps. I'm not sure if you were doing it before, but this helps so I can go straight to your latest post.

I'm trying to figure out if there is also a way to follow the chronology of the storyline, or is the blog entirely organized by the chronology of the story-parts creation?

I'm really interested by the posts I have read. There's so much that was posted before I realized your site was here that I'm not sure I'll ever catch up.
When will you publish the whole book for me to read? :)

I wasn't really doing that before at all, but I'll try keep it up in the future. Some of the stuff that I'm still posting is already written and is just being translated to blog format, so I'll have to figure out a way to note that stuff as well.

The Chronology of Coera-Ohida-Gohira is scattered around the blog, but the stories are ordered here.

Within the framework of ages of Coera, the stories are as follows:

Theogenesis is the birth of the gods, and is first. The end of Theogenesis is the birth and seclusion of Coera, who is spun into a circular timeline.

The turning ages of Coera are not strictly ordered, but if you have to give them a linear structure, the stories fit in as follows:

• Pol and Enthess is near the beginning of the 3rd age, and the story of the Patriarchs is near the end of the same age.
  
• The story alternately labeled as Rithander, Godswordsman, Dafyd or Deyvid's story is near the end of the fifth age.
  
• Riel's story is near the end of the sixth age, the last of the circular ages.
  
• Heaven Descendedmarks the turning from the sixth to seventh ages and the beginning of the seventh age.
  
• The Neocarnation triptych, which begins with Snow Crash (now titled A Diamond in Snow) is in the seventh age.
  
• Tuk's story marks the end of the ages of Coera and the beginning of agelessness.
  

Sooner or later I plan to work up an entry graphic that illustrates this timeline and links to the various stories.

Last time I counted, this should come out to 18 books total, though that number is likely to grow as new stories glom on to the Coera/Ohida world.


Anne said:

I'm not sure you're really looking for opinions, but I would like to tell you how intrigued I am.

(Question: What is "flavor"? How does flavor fit into this imagery of minds? Does it carry more meaning with it than the obvious sensation of taste?)

If you find and read this comment and are so inclined to respond to it, will you respond with a new "bloggish" post?

Thanks.

I'm definitely looking for opinions. I really hope this is interesting to someone, at least when I start finishing bits and portions someday. That would be the difference between me being a crazyman with alternate world seeping out of his head and me being an obscure author (maybe). If you have any critiques or suggestions, I'm interested in those, too.

"Flavor" in that context doesn't really mean taste at all; it's the best prope-synonym I could think of for "qualities" or "varieties in substance". I've got a semi-active search working for a better term, if you can suggest one.

As for answering in a bloggish post, here you are!


Anne said:

I think I'm starting to understand...
There are several different books in the works here, yes?
But are they multiple volumes within a related story (seems that way) or are they meant to be separate?

You don't have to answer all of my questions if you don't want to.

The answer is, "A little bit of Column A, a little bit of Column B."

Most of the stories started off seperate. The nascence of the first of the stories started off with this pair +1 of drawings - that story turned into Rithahnder. This isn't the first, but it's a remake of an early Riel Hunter drawing done back when Riel was a prospective RPG character in Josh and my quickly restarting games. Since both stories involved vampires and I kept drawing Riel in modern and fantasy settings, I tried to come up with a way to have my cake and eat it, too, which turned into the story of the Sam'Eveya. Tuk was added on, because a trilogy is always better than a simple sequel. A Diamond in Snow started off as a joint project between Josh and myself that I took over and warped from a comedic parody to a morality tale. Theogenesis was a product of trying to tie the Neocarnation stories in with the other three series and the effluence from my appreciation of Tolkien's Silmarillion. Heaven Descended and Pol and Enthess were also independent projects that with a little bending and a lot of serendipity were worked into the storyline into places where they weren't extraneous, but necessary.

My goal is to have each storyline be independent enough that in reading them you wouldn't even realize that there were other stories with the same setting and super-story-arc, like Heinlein's "Future History", but if you do read more than one of the story-lines, the links emerge like epiphanies. That would be the ideal, anyway.

I'm happy to answer any other questions you might have!

=)