The above is the front cover my first and so far only self-published novel, The Demon-God of Jubagh. It’s the first book of the first trilogy, whose rough draft is finished; the second trilogy is The Renegades of Jubagh and is about halfway done. Both trilogies (and any future installments) belong to the Jubagh series, set in the Gurhai universe.

The Demon-God of Jubagh (which I will often abbreviate as TDGoJ) was begun as a pre-NaNoWriMo novel in 2007. I wrote a one-line summary that sounded like fun, expanded it to a short paragraph, and set out with the intent to write a little bit of the story every day. (I’m terrible at doing anything that regularly, so it was an exercise in self-discipline as much as creativity.)

In a dark universe, in an era of instability and fluctuations of chaos, a [black mage] helps an [exiled paladin] stop the indigenous population of [an Earth-like world] from summoning [an evil god], with the assistance of [a tribal native].

This is a sword-and-sorcery/scifi with an emphasis on reversing stereotypes. The story is about a black mage, an exiled paladin, and a tribal native. It starts in an outpost in a demon-haunted land. The story begins with a heated conversation and climaxes with a tragedy. The critical element of the story is a death. A conflict between those who use magic and those who don’t plays a major role in the story.

Credit Where Credit’s Due: The formats of the one-liner and the paragraph are taken from Seventh Sanctum‘s action film and story generators, respectively.

One month later, I’d finished the first book of the trilogy. November was at hand, so I flung myself into NaNoWriMo with enthusiasm and wrote the second book and part of the third. By mid-December, I’d finished the entire trilogy, and my mind was reeling. This was the first major project I’d ever finished. I had done zero worldbuilding or brainstorming or plot-weaving in advance. I’d just written an entire trilogy, a total of roughly one hundred thousand words, by the seat of my pants.

I took a breather, fairly burned out by writing so much in ten weeks, then began the next trilogy, The Renegades of Jubagh (TRoJ). It followed the same three main characters that rose to stardom in TDGoJ; I got halfway through the second book of three before burning out again.

I’ve spent my time since then fleshing out the mechanics of the Gurhai universe, its people, and its worlds (check out the starmap!). There are exactly 100 sapients and 100 worlds in the universe; it is finite and measurable by anyone with a good intersun ship. The Jubagh series is segregated into books named after the planets on which they’re set – Book One: Jubagh, Book Two: Sivef, and Book Three: Gurhai for The Demon-God of Jubagh, and Book One: Thurmenyan, Book Two: Ryarna, and Book Three: Ztar for The Renegades of Jubagh.

As I was up to my elbows in fresh mud and creatures, I realized that there was a prequel skulking in the shadows. Book Zero, Enmity, deals with how the aforementioned black mage (Rai Gerring) and exiled paladin (Brandon Styhan) met – and all the chaos that ensued when two men from fatally opposed factions didn’t immediately kill each other. Now my goal is to finish worldbuilding, then start writing the rough draft of Enmity, whose outline is already written and saved.

While Into Fang Wood is going to take the foremost burner, I’ll be continuing work on the Gurhai ‘verse and its worldbuilding in preparation for starting Enmity after IFW is finished and in revisions. Personally, I tend to do best when I have more than one project to play with, so that when I burn out on one, I can switch to the other. How do you manage and mitigate writer’s burn-out? Do you enjoy having multiple irons in the fire, or do you prefer to concentrate on one thing at a time?

Related posts:

1. My Sixth NaNovel
2. Introducing Into Fang Wood
3. It’s a beautiful day.

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