Okay peoples, I’m excited about this new project. Not just the book, but also the energy and effort put into this blog that will (from this point on) document the piecing together of all the parts, strings, research, and inspiration to a puzzle that will display (hopefully, and without sounding arrogant) an historical epic masterpiece for Black literature.
Okay … so that sounds completely arrogant. But, hey, do you.
Anyway, I’ve only once documented the stages of my writing, though not in real time. The effort was an afterthought. I put together 18 pages recounting the ideas, inspirations, and the ins and outs of a series of unpublished books I wrote in high school (continuing in college) titled The Infinity Cycles. People that I shared some of the ‘books’ with always wanted to know what was the thought process that went into the creation of the series. I recited the story so many times—going all the way back to when I was five years old and influenced by an Atari 2600 comic book/videogame entitled Sword Quest: Earth World—I thought I should write about the entire story that led up to the first book entitled All Seven. A Prince album and writings I had done in the sixth grade would be inspiration to create an epic adventure eight books long. Unpublished.
What made the people I did share the ‘books’ with question the inspiration was the fact that the first book All Seven, became the sixth book in the series when all was said and done. How did that happen? Well, that’s a story for another time.
Besides friends always asking me about my inspiration, I’ve always loved behind-the-scenes footage and interviews of movies, and knowing what was put into creating the final product. Also, the book Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplays was a heavy hitting piece of inspiration. It documented every aspect of the Original Trilogy. Any Star Wars fan or aspiring filmmaker should snatch books like those. Awesome!
So, that’s the back story to the back story to the back story. I do wish I could’ve done this earlier, especially for the epic poem The Ronin Poetz. My entire lecturing career started with the book tour for The Ronin Poetz. Audiences wanted to know the inspirations and steps to creating the first African-American, Narrative Epic Poem (A Novel-in-Rhyme). And all the stories for my second book, 12 Stories High: The Imaginative Trip Thru a Black Mind, have a story to them. And the creation of the book, how it started, what stories made the cut, what didn’t, original titles, concepts, and story symbolism, of course, has a story to them. The third book, Code-47: Memoirs of a Hip Hop Heist … actually … I don’t mind that I did not document. It was a pretty straight forward write, only minor plot points and scenes changed.Code-47 speaks for itself.
But there were a lot of notes.
There’s a lot of catching up to do even with this next book. Code-47 is still fresh and new. The promotion continues, and probably will through early next year. But putting out one project, and promoting it, doesn’t slow an artist down from moving onto the next one.
So, here I am. This is my second novel and fourth book, A Company of Moors. This is the book I have been waiting to write since being in the middle of scribing the stories from 12 Stories High.
There will be no spoilers posted here. This will just be a collection of thought processes, the trials and tribulations of writing, meeting self-imposed deadlines, switching around notes, characters, seeing what works. But very little of the plot will be revealed.
There are over 35 pages of notes for the story. The notes for the historical research are 130 pages long. All of that must be combined. This will also be about if I’m writing, the troubles encountered, and the fun I’m having.
This will be an imaginative trip thru a black mind.
N-joy.
