The Peacock King Trilogy: How I Survived Writing It

Above this post is the first drawing I ever did of Lotus, back before I even knew his real name was Lyric. I don't have a date for it, but I know I drew it before November 26th, 2004. That's because I know I drew it before the first attempt I made at writing The Peacock King, and I still have that first attempt as a tiny text file, and I just told you the date of its creation (and last modification).

That's right, 2004. Pretty crazy. That's six years ago, isn't it?

Man, I almost feel like I should explain its lateness. ...So I will. I'm going to warn you that this gets to be a long post, since it's how the dang Trilogy started and how it came to be ended. I'll talk about the individual books in later posts.

Around 2000 I was in college and decided to try my hand at Slayers fanfiction... yes, I'm that Irk. You can still find my stuff on Fanfiction.net, and I'm not very ashamed of it even though it's ancient. I'm mostly ashamed that none of it was ever finished! But I learned to write fiction through Slayers fanfiction, and didn't have much accompaniment through that end of the journey. As in, I had no editor or person to make sure I made my deadlines. Heck, I had no deadlines or schedules, even. I had no set parameters, no structure, no support and scaffolding. IN SHORT, I HAD NO CHAR.

Scary, isn't it?

Well, I knew Char way back then - she read my fanfics! Even drew fanart for some. We were great friends - and then she moved to California and I moved to Florida in 2003, and we sort of lost touch, and I kept writing my Slayers fanfics alone. Except I kept hitting this wall. I was getting a lot of ideas, you see. Original ideas that were making my fanfics pretty popular. Except, well... they stopped fitting into the fanfiction, and then the fanfiction stopped fitting into my writing. I wanted to finish those stories, but didn't understand yet that what I should have done then was rewrite them as original fiction. Back then, it was a little rarer to publish fiction online, though, and I didn't think I had anything good enough to publish... and I was really afraid that since the fics were already online, I couldn't get the original rewrites published at all. I felt so stuck.

Meanwhile, when my brain gets stuck on a story idea, it hops to another story. If there are no other stories then my brain will make a new one up so it has somewhere to run. Somehow the beginnings of The Peacock King came about from this, in about 2004. At first it was a Slayers fanfic, even - Dynast (the High King) captures Xelloss (the Beast Priest) and has his animal trainer attempt to break him for his own use (Hakuhou from Oujisama Lv1, a reference to test your potential yaoi cred). Now, I let some fanfics get waaaaaay off the beaten track of Slayers canon, but this story tested even my limits; I spent a month of batting against the mental wall that was this story. Then I named it The Peacock King, realizing it was truly an original idea and that these characters weren't even close to the Slayers characters I was trying to cast them as. Xelloss in particular was so feral and utterly non-human (Xelloss in Slayers canon may be a demon, but he has many traits that are human, even if they may be an act). Hakuhou... well, Oujisama Lv1 was never translated (that I've found) so he was mostly based off of pictures and voice clips (Akira Ishida, if you're that kind of fan) and some hunches. Xelloss' feral nature became Faun rather quickly, Hakuhou's fabulousness and quick wits became a sort of proto-Lotus, and Dynast grew into what you now know as the Peacock King.

It was a beginning. As you know, it could have easily become the story you just read. Unfortunately, it didn't, because I lacked the one necessary component I needed to be able to write a story.

I need to tell it to someone first.

I came very, very close. Char and I bumped into each other online once, and I mentioned it to her, but then she disappeared and had her own adventure for awhile, and I wouldn't hear from her again until a few years later. The few contacts I could tell the story to, I couldn't explain it to for some reason - they weren't actively replying or asking questions, maybe? I can never tell how these things work until they DO.

I kind of shut it down and tried to finish up my fanfics, which were failing because I needed a better creative outlet. But in 2004, in November, I managed one attempt at The Peacock King that actually got saved.

* * *

Just a pitiful kneeling form on his pristine floor. So small, really - though, the angle from the throne did make all the lesser beings look smaller regardless. His guest wore something that could pass as fashion inside the lowest echelons of society - it was neatly cut, and clean enough, but there was no real flair to it, no grand designs. And he dared try carrying himself as if he were equal to a king? He even wrapped a cloak around himself in the style of nobles. Perhaps there was a rustic charm to his garb, in the thick fur trim or the beads strung about it. But there was no excuse for something so quaint to be worn in the place where the king had caught Faun.

No, there was nothing beautiful about this being

* * *

What the heck is that? I didn't even finish the last sentence.

I distracted myself from writing until 2006, trying various projects that failed and convincing myself that I couldn't be a writer because I couldn't consistently put words onto paper. Occasionally a new idea would pop up, but without a way of telling it to someone via conversation, I couldn't write it. Not understanding that this is a perfectly legitimate way to plan or outline a story, I assumed I was simply doing it wrong. You can blame a lot of conventional wisdom and "how to" lists on that, by the way.

And then, 2006 happened. National Novel Writing Month happened. My life fell apart right before November of that year. I felt that there was no way to fix the mess that was me. So I decided to do the responsible thing.

I ignored it all for a month by writing the first 50,000 words of a story called Damaged Girl, and pouring all my pain, stress, and insecurities into that story. I'm pretty sure that's what kept me sane into December. I don't know how long it would have helped me past that, because I was letting my life spiral even further out of control by that point.

It doesn't matter, because in January 2007 Char and I ran across each other online again, and that was really what we both needed.

I'll sum up 2007 thusly: it caused February 2008 to happen. By February 2008 I faced (many of) my demons, shed the dead weight dragging my life down, and moved to Portland after falling in love with the city. After that... well, it wasn't all roses, but being in close proximity with Char led to a lot of talking, and it led to a lot of me telling stories (it's my side effect) and it led to The Peacock King finally getting unlocked in about April or so. By December, Book 1 started posting on the original Blogspot page. I couldn't imagine ever actually getting to the end... and back then Char and I both thought PK was a one-novel affair.

Now I've mentally pooped out THREE novels, and how do I feel afterward? Amazed, relieved, relaxed, and hopeful. More than anything else I'm so impressed with where Char and I have each managed to push ourselves to - she's married to a great guy, she's much happier and healthier, and she's willing to call herself Peacock King's co-author by now. I uh...

Well, I like where my life is going, and I'm willing to push it a lot farther now. I can write regularly, finish stories, plan them out, talk to people, draw what I mean to draw, and help build amazing websites that grow communities alongside stories. I am writing things, people are reading them, and I am proud of it.

There's further to climb still (so many stories unfinished still), but I wouldn't have gotten there without The Peacock King Trilogy, and I owe most if not all of that to Char, so thank her if you have a chance. She's why this story is here, and in a way she's why I am here.