The Making of Fate of the Qhami
EPIPHANY
I can remember the moment when I first knew I had to move beyond imagining the Fate of the Qhami and actually write the books. In June 2009, I was doing my student teaching in Dallas, Texas, USA. While teaching counting to a pre-schooler, this little vignette came to me where Korla says to Bodin, after he’s almost been killed, “You’re a damn fool for staying.” The emotion, the context, the body language were all there at once. I got this big grin on my face and I thought, “Yeah, that could really be something.” I was stuck there for about fifteen seconds just grinning and not doing anything but revel in the idea. That little preschooler probably wondered what was wrong with me.
That was when I knew I had to write this.
Before that epiphany, the story of the Fate of the Qhami had only been a smattering of story line snippets and scene vignettes in my head. In early 2008, I originally had Davia (she was a male named Davi then) as the main character. Elkasu (originally called Cyrus) had joined the Exiles for religious reasons before the main action of the story took place. The main story line was what now happens in Book Two.
Tansul was a character in a fishing village on a secret world where he was being cultivated by a Noble in semi-stasis as a replacement for her long dead husband. The whole sequence was originally going to start with Tansul and the Noble’s young assistant fleeing the village, getting picked up by Volkas, and somehow ending up among the Exiles.
I conceived of a book for Tansul, a book for Davi, a book for Amjia (originally called Dema), and one book with all of them together. I’m not sure how much I had about Bodin (but he was first called Bodine).
In March 2009, I started creating what would later be the conlang, Ezai. I wrote sa, ma and a couple other word pairs on an index card that I was using to study for the GRE. That summer, I started developing the conlang in earnest. I brainstormed a slew of Ezai words alphabetically and assigned English words to those Ezai words based on sound and "feel". The first matches were basic pairs like light-dark, happy-sad, full-empty, etc. I also had a few vignettes of Bodin’s story.
Around this time a large chunk of the story-world fell into place. It amazed me how much came from just a question of setting: when does the story take place? That made me ask, “how do they measure time?” I decided there must be some important event from which they measure time. That spawned the Dawn of Order. And from the Dawn of Order came Soledon, the Bakásbole, the Protectorate, the reign of Primarqs and so on.
Percolating
Despite my passion for the story, I spent roughly two years after the epiphany not writing. I call this phase, Percolating. I thought about the stories much of the time but wrote very little. At first, I mentally sketched out the different story lines for Tansul, Bodin, Davi (Davia), Amjia. I still wanted to start with Tansul the little fishing village but I couldn’t see how telling each of the separate stories in their own book and then bringing it together with Davi as the protagonist would work. Eventually I realized that I was most compelled by Bodin’s story at Narben with Korla. I cut Tansul’s story because, although it was good, I couldn’t figure out how he would contribute to the wider story. I made Bodin the central protagonist.
I continued to work on Ezai (mostly for character names) and the a world bible called, Encyclopedia of the Qhami. I wrote a bit of the Doctrine of Isolation and the start of a short story called, Practice Killing. It was a film noir/police procedural about a detective named Masde who investigated a serial killer who turned out to be a retired Kitazr assassin.
Serious Outlining
In mid-2011, I was still scared of screwing up the beautiful thing I had in my head. However, I buckled down and wrote the first page or so of the first book just as pure, stream-of- consciousness pre-writing. Then, aided by a birthday gift of Scrivener, I started outlining. Along with writing an outline I was still doing heavy percolating. But now the story was taking up virtually every unoccupied thought that I had and giving me a great deal of pleasure. I started carrying a tiny notebook everywhere so I could jot down ideas.
I continued to work on the Encyclopedia and the Ezai dictionary. Nikal was, at this point, almost exactly like how I describe Zufra. He was the original pure-evil villain. But I couldn’t figure how a clever girl like Amjia would fall for him.
"It Fits"
By late 2011, I had a distillation of story that was finally workable. Bodin became good guy #1; Tansul rejoined the cast as Bodin’s right hand man; Nikal became more conflicted and less evil and finally, more or less good; Ahlbes became Undesirable #1 and the series’ uber-villain. The action condensed into three books with a possible fourth (which is tangential but interesting). By this point I could see a path for every character and how it would all come together. I embraced crapiness and started writing more regularly.
In March 2012, when I first compiled this part of “the backstory of the story”, I wrote this fitting line:
“Now I come to the hardest part: getting it from my head and safely on paper.”
TRuly Drafting
January 18th, 2016. I’ve averaged a little less than a page a day for the last two years or so. Some months have been better than others. I finished a first draft of Book One on June 24, 2014 and I’m about 50,000 words into a first draft on Book Two. I had started a second draft of Traitors a few days after finishing the first draft. In mid-July I paused to make a new outline. I fumbled around with that second draft and managed about eight chapters, interspersed with working on bits of Tomb Raider: Descendant.
Then, on December 23, 2014, I abandoned the second draft of Traitors. I realized I needed to know the whole story before I could truly re-write the first book. I started a first draft of Exiles (book #2).
I’ve realized that my best weapon for fighting perfectionism is to make my first draft a “discovery draft.” It allows me to go places with characters just to discover what might happen. It doesn’t have to be good writing and it doesn’t even have to have a chance of making it into the final work but freeing myself to discover is a great way to move forward. I like the analogy someone made of the first draft being putting sand in a sandbox from which I’ll later make castles.
First Draft Done
August 10, 2017. After almost 50 months of writing, I have finished the first draft (discovery draft) of each of the three books in the Fate of the Qhami trilogy. I finished the first draft of Traitors on June 24, 2014. I finished the first draft of Exiles on August 1, 2016 (a little over 19 months after starting). I immediately started a first draft of Warriors (book #3 in the trilogy). (I then paused to work on a giant timeline of the events in the story; I am a planner, for sure.) I finished the first draft of Warriors on August 9, 2017 (just over a year later).
So, I spent four years and a month (49 months) writing the first draft of the trilogy:
Almost 12 months for book #1,
6 months trying a second draft of #1,
19 months for book #2
12 months for book #3
I’m currently revising the first book to get it ready for beta readers and eventually publishing. I plan to have it out to beta readers by the summer of 2018.
Sometimes a Conlang Helps
December 11th, 2017. My interest in writing has been waning lately. I’ve been falling asleep at the computer while trying to write. Not a good sign. In this instance–perhaps only in this instance–creating Ezai has helped me get back to writing (instead of distracting me from it). I’ve been adding new words (basics from Noll’s 3000 words like “this” and “who”) and that has been spurring thoughts about the Qhami and the first trilogy. I also figured out how to form the punctuation today.
CHANGE OF PLANS
January 21st, 2021. I’ve finished the second draft of the second book in the trilogy. My new plan is to finish a second draft of all three books, get them to my writing group for critique (they’re currently about 75% done with book 2) and then go back to book 1 and edit the crap out of that thing.
I’m finding that, for me, having the whole trilogy set before I get any one book completed is invaluable. I’m not yet skilled enough to see into the second and especially third books without having written them.
SECOND DRAFT COMPLETE
My records get fuzzy after finishing that first draft of the trilogy. Later in August 2017, I have records of editing and revising Traitors; I was tracking minutes instead of words. I do know that in late February 2018—after joining a writing group—I started a second full draft of Traitors because I realized big pieces were missing (Amjia’s storyline, Elkasu’s storyline). I finished the 2nd draft in June 2019 (about 16 months).
I assume I started the second draft of the second book shortly thereafter. I finished the second draft of Exiles on January 22, 2021 (about 19 months later, again; I took November 2019 off to do NaNoWriMo).
The second draft of Warriors took me about 16 months to write. As with the second draft of Exiles, I don’t know exactly when I started but I know when I finished. I do know I finished second draft of trilogy on May 31, 2022 (just under nine years after starting the first draft of book). The second draft took roughly four years and a month (omitting a month for NaNoWriMo 2019 and a month for Camp NaNoWriMo 2020 when I was starting my supernatural thriller project).
The Murky Middle
October 29th, 2022. I’m facing a dark and confusing time with this project. I finished the second draft of the third book in the Fate of the Qhami trilogy on May 31, 2022. My complete second draft journey spanned 51 months and over 400,000 words. Finishing felt like a triumph and I was sure I could carry that momentum into the next phase: editing and revising Book One.
Only I didn’t.
The first book needed substantial revisions. I mapped out a refreshed outline and even though I was now behind my intended schedule, I knew where I was going. Now I just had to keep meeting my daily word count.
Only I didn’t.
I spent weeks struggling with two opening scenes. I fell asleep at my keyboard numerous times. I pivoted and wrote those scenes from a first-person POV instead of close third, hoping that mixing things up would break me out of my funk.
Only it didn’t.
Now it’s been five months and my production has plummeted. In fairness, other obligations ate most of my summer and sapped my available brain power and having a small child at home makes me much more likely to fall asleep at night when I want to be writing. But even now that my proverbial plate has less on it, I’m still struggling to move forward. For the time being, I have moved to a different project not set in the Qhami at all. It pains me to postpone a project I love and believe in, but I’ve got to make a change. Is it the right change?
Only time can tell.
World-building Renaissance
October 23, 2024. In the fall of 2023, while working on the final stages of the second draft of my supernatural thriller, I found myself drawn back to the Qhami for stretches of mental tourism. I’ve explored the Pa-anee, the “Zulsenadim”, the power dynamics between the Nobles and Primarq, important historical events surrounding the Bakásbole, games and recreation, and a few key locations. I cleaned up and simplified my world-building notes and added pieces that had been in my head for a while but I had never committed to them to text. This organization has opened up more ideas and possibilities. This renewal of Qhami world-building has continued in fits and spurts until now. (I think of it as world-building percolating.)
Overall, this return to world-building excites me for whenever I return to writing in the Qhami. This is interesting to me because sometimes world-building can be a sanctuary where I avoid writing. It possesses the joy of creation without the labor of storytelling. Not so this time. I’m looking forward to my eventual return.