A Reflection and Preflection of Spectral Crown

“Wait a minute, that isn’t a word! You can’t just make up words!”

So. Spectral Crown is finished. The entirety of the text, as I have it now, is online, for free, for the whole world to read. It took me a year-ish to write and revise the text twice, but even that was done four years ago. I’m a different person now, and I’d like to think I’m a better writer now, than I was when I finished Spectral Crown. So what does this mean for the future of the book? And what do I think of it, looking back? 

Well, I’m only going to answer one of those questions now because, despite posting this thing pretty regularly for the last two years or so, I still haven’t actually re-read it myself since my last revision, back in 2018. Obviously I know the story pretty well, and the characters and the general trend of the action and whatnot, but I can’t actually say how I feel about the quality of the writing or the actual direction of the book because, again, I haven’t read it in like three or four years. So I’m not even going to try and bullshit a response here about how well or unwell I feel the book actually performs its intended duties; instead, I’ll just give a short assessment, from many miles away, and then move on to discussing other things. (editor’s note: I lied. I’ll be answering both questions. In great detail.)

The book needs work. A lot of work. From the first chapter to the last chapter and the weird Resident Evil chapter in between, it needs another round (or several) of revisions. What I’ve posted on my blog is, essentially, a beta version of Spectral Crown. Which will be pretty cool, looking back from the future if I do ever get it published, to have this weird early-stage forever memorialized online, but it’s not much more than a teaser for now.

I didn’t see the amount of work needed the first time around when I started posting this. Or perhaps I wanted to fool myself into thinking otherwise. But it needs some things fixed. I had hoped, way back when I first began this little adventure, that somehow, magically, Spectral Crown would attract the attention of either a) a literary agent, b) a publishing house, or failing both of those, c) a small, devoted fan base that would be excited at each new chapter’s release that could, later, turn into a professionally published novel, a la the fabled promised land of Andy Weir’s The Martian and its self-publishing-to-Matt-Damon-Starring-Role saga.

These were, predictably, pipe dreams. I’m still holding out hope in the back of my mind that someday, somehow, this blog will get noticed by someone who’s in the field of publishing and looking for new talent, but although this blog started out with that being its singular goal, this is no longer what the blog exists for. If I want to get published, I really need to double down on doing it the old-fashioned way, with query letters and submissions and lots and lots of rejection. No one’s coming to me, no matter how much I hope for it. That, or I have to get really, really famous on TikTok and leverage my media influence that way. Considering I loathe social media with a passion to rival the devil himself, I don’t think that’s the way I’m gonna go.

So, that means that, if I ever want to see Spectral Crown printed and in the hands of readers everywhere, I’ll need to chisel it into shape. Or self-publish it anyway and distribute print copies randomly around the country, but that’s very expensive. What this chiseling would look like will, of course, depend upon what I find once I start digging back through it once more. Like I said, I haven’t read the thing in three-ish years. I have some ideas, but those are up for debate.

Those ideas, at any rate, largely revolve around Iacob and Saelac. If their relationship is to be one of the two emotional cruxes of the narrative, then it really, really needs to be rock solid. Right now, from what I remember, it’s shallow, unfulfilling, and almost entirely reliant on sex, Iacob’s crushing loneliness, and Saelac’s self preservation-cum-selfishness (heh. cum). I have two options with where to go from there. I can alter it, to make the relationship more believable, more genuine, more emotionally deep, and more about them finding strange blessings among even stranger places. Or I can absolutely lean into the terrible, shallow nature of it, and build it into something twisted and toxic that reflects the Castle Blestem as much as Saelac’s own eat-or-be-eaten mentality by the end of the book. In my mind, the real hero here is Iacob. Plus, I need to write some actual sex scenes, too. Both for fun and because sex sells. And besides, if I can describe men being ripped limb from limb by ghosts, packs of birdmen-zombies crashing through windows like a pound of bricks, and Reinhard turning into a grotesque spider thing, why am I drawing the line at sex? What am I, some sort of prude?

On that same front, Saelac needs some work. He’s flat. He has an internal monologue, sure, but it’s nothing interesting, from a character perspective. The Point of View needs to be completely colored by his experiences. You, as the reader, should absolutely believe that what Saelac is telling you is the truth, doubling down on the Faustian deal with his mother, while at the same time, doubting the virtue of his escape.

And for the other emotional crux of the story, the relationship between Saelac and his mother, I think I’ve got that one alright, but it could still use some work too. I’m less sure of what direction I want to take it in, but likely it could, once more, go two ways. I could build up a more model mother-son dynamic, and that was kind of what I was going for/what I had in this draft. Which would make it all the more crushing when Saelac turns on her at the end. Or, like before, I emphasize and fully realize that co-dependency inherent to their relationship and make that moment of cursing a true nadir for Saelac. Not something that has to be drawn out of his mother, but something she’s more than willing to do by the very end. It should become the moment where Saelac really loses it. Like a villain origin story or something.

And trying on these different options for size will be interesting. Do I go for a more positive take on Saelac and Josefa at the expense of Saelac and Iacob’s relationship, which is status quo for this draft of the book? Do I make them both terrible? Perhaps one could sour over time while the other grows. Maybe, just maybe, they both become stronger, more positive relationships, drawing people together and forging stronger bonds through adversity, before ripping them apart at the end. But that wouldn’t make for very interesting character dynamics, albeit it might be an easier one to swallow.

Then where does that leave Saelac? All this time, I talked about his transformation from someone who’s at least respectable to something rather vile. But is that something that’s even in the book? How do his actions read? When I first wrote the text, I intended for Saelac to be this kind of morally neutral entity. Opportunistic, yes, with a keen sense of self-preservation, but not malicious. But the more I think about how the end of the book goes down, I can’t help feeling like Saelac absolutely butchers it all. And that’s good, I think it’s a fitting ending, but if I want him to be a “good” guy, he cannot do that shit that he pulls at the end. So I could go for the morally conflicted angle, which is probably how it kind of turns out now, or I can, again, lean into what I think the book wants to be and make him into a corrupted force by the end of the text. Is he corrupted by those laughing skeletons in the basement? By the pain and suffering inflicted on his friends and family? Is Iacob more devious than he seems? Or was this inside Saelac all along, waiting for a chance to be let out? I’ll need to think about it, to go back and reassess everything about the characterization of both Sealac and those around him as I, someday, reread this with a critical eye.

Now, I don’t know about you, but I think the action is, for the most part, fine. The shit that happens in the book, with the crawling through the walls and escape attempts and the monsters, I think that’s well and good. I don’t feel I need to change a lot of that. If anything, I could add more, or conversely, condense the two small-group expeditions into one single event. If anything, I’ll give it all some emotional flair that holds a mirror up to Saelac or the castle itself, but I think it’s the characters that need the most work. And that’s the most important part of the book.

Then comes the question that everyone always wants answered at the end of something; what does it all mean? What’s the point of the text? When I wrote Spectral Crown, I was inspired by a series of visions I had in a nightmare I had one night. Of crystal chalices and goblets, the shattering of bloodlines, of crawling through fireplaces and finding monsters deep beneath the castle. I wrote this book with the thought in mind that I would find the meaning as I go along, which is, admittedly, what most professional authors recommend. Not all, but a lot of them. I don’t think I actually found it. It’s a good fun romp, and not everything has to have a deeper meaning or social commentary, but if I want this to speak to people, it has to be saying something. What’s it gonna say? There’s a time and a place for books that are about creative ways to kill off your characters, and maybe Spectral Crown is, in fact, one of those books, but could it do something more?

Perhaps it’s a book on class struggle. The physical and metaphorical divide between the servants to the castle and the royals themself is something that comes up constantly throughout the book. Maybe it’s a story about how the rich eat the poor and then destroy themselves in their own attempts to gain more power. About how architecture itself can be a tool of violence and oppression, and that those in power will lunge at every opportunity to use that power. And maybe Saelac himself is seduced by this promise. Or maybe it’s a book on fleeing restrictions on your personhood imposed by familial relationships? Just as Iacob strives to leave his doomed family and be someone else that his family deeply resents him for wanting to be (with Iacob wanting to be literally anyone other than a Blestemat), there’s this undercurrent that Saelac, too, wants to escape. This wasn’t something I realized until after the book was finished, but there is a distinct feeling that Saelac is, despite all his mother’s love and support, unfulfilled with her around. Or at least, that’s how it seems to me. There’s this struggle between him maintaining loyalty to his mother and him trying to be with Iacob, and in the end, he chooses his mother and everything literally crashes down around him. Perhaps it’s a story not just about identity (and LGBTQ+ identity, of course), but about outgrowing your parents?

Disclaimer: The feelings expressed by Spectral Crown and my analysis of it do not necessarily reflect my own familial experiences. I don’t feel like you’re smothering me, mom. But my unmet need to crawl through dark, abandoned places and peer through walls like a little goblin? Absolutely expressed in this book.

Whatever it is that the book is actually about, it better shine through in that revision, or it isn’t really worth anything. Again, books that are just action or horror and no depth are fine. Half of Stephen King’s books fall in that category. Even some of the good ones! And it’s just like rom-coms or soap operas or Marvel movies or Call of Duty or The Big Bang Theory or Fox News. Everyone needs some meaningless fluff to turn their brains off without thinking critically and just sit back and enjoy the show once in a while. Some of the options are better than others, admittedly. Hell, I love Marvel movies, but I wouldn’t call them high literature (though sometimes they do toe the line a bit, Shang Chi being a recent example of excellence. Maybe I’ll write about that another day). We can still love and enjoy these things, even cherish them or maybe them parts of our person, without them needing to be artistic or have some deeper meaning. And though I wouldn’t call Spectral Crown high literature either, I do want it to be more a little than just cannon fodder.

Ah, but you get the idea. Anyway, my short assessment from many miles away became the bulk of this post. How about that. Who would have thought that letting an author write about their own writing would get carried away and self-indulgent? So that’s the reflection. But what about the preflection?

Well, it’s weird to think that Spectral Crown is done for this blog, but it isn’t really done. I mean, I still have ideas for two more posts about it, at least. One will be that statistical analysis of words that I promised a while back, utilizing custom Python code (it might even end up on GitHub! Wouldn’t that be crazy?), and the other will be… Well, you’ll know it when you see it. Trust me.

I’m sad that my easy out if I’m having a rough week is done, but honestly, posting Spectral Crown on here didn’t really mean that much to me, for reasons I don’t quite understand. Posting it has been kind of hollow, and unfulfilling, maybe because I used it more of a utility than an actual sense of “look at this cool thing I made.” I’m sharing my work with the world! Shouldn’t I be excited, or at least a little sad, that it’s done? And while I am a little sad, I think I knew, deep down even at the beginning, that Spectral Crown wasn’t done. It isn’t going to be done for a while, because even though I have lots of ideas of how to improve it, I don’t know if it’s what I want to work on right now. I’d almost rather start from scratch on something new than try to get Spectral Crown whipped into shape. At least for now.

But, that being said, writing this has got me all fired up and excited for the brand new possibilities of a better version of this book. There’s something here, underneath the roughness of it. I do believe that now, actually more than I ever have before, frankly. Which is a little surreal to admit, since I’ve been sharing it for over two years. Spectral Crown was always my practice novel, and yeah, I practiced with it. But where I used to think that I had outgrown it, and maybe none of it was salvageable at all, now I do feel like there are things worth saving. Would it be through revisions? Or would I just rewrite the whole damn thing? I don’t know. But the future of Spectral Crown is in a good place. Someday, hopefully, it’ll be in a better shape, and I’ll like it more, and it’ll be something publishable. Thank you all for reading along, those of you that have. Extra special thanks to my mom, dad, Nick, Melanie, and Cheyenne for reading it and believing in me long before I ever posted the whole thing on here. For now, it’s weird that the journey is over. But at the same time, it feels like it’s just begun.