The Chosen Hero & the Villain's Daughter


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"Ah, and most important of all, girl, do you know legend of Maker's Chosen Hero?"

A thrill shot through Kaleek's veins. Yes, the machine had filled her with that knowledge too. A dozen versions of a story about how the Cybrii came to be by the Maker's hand, and what they had been built to do. In every story, one character stood up tallest among them, rallying the others to save the island. Sometimes it was a princess rallying them to slay a great dragon, sometimes a sly lizard saving them from a never-ending night. Always, their meaning was the same. One day, a warrior who was stronger than any others would rise up when the Darkness returned, and put an end to it forever.

"Yes, and it's going to be me," She replied, hoping someday it would come true.

Synopsis

Every Cybri is taught from birth that he or she was crafted by an ancient Maker to defend their island home against an evil they only know as the Darkness.

As a "hybrid freak" among normal, single-element kids, Kaleek's childhood was far from easy. Yet when an unfortunate birthday celebration sends her on an unexpected quest with her older brother, she finds out just how hard life can become. In a world where her island's village elders are so stuffed with elemental power that they tower three tiems the size of an average person, Kaleek dreams of becoming strong enough to unite them all and fulfill the legend of Maker's Chosen Hero.

The further their adventures take her, however, the more Kaleek realizes she may never find a way out from her big brother's shadow, much less that of her people's greatest heroes.

Production Status

% Milestone Timeline Notes
80% Outline 2025 Q1 Technically I finished before writing Shadow's Ember. However, my vision for the story is clearer now, and I have some structural changes to make as a result.
30% Rough Draft 2025 If I didn't have to rewrite my entire writing style after reopening the project, I'd be closer to 60% done or more. We'll see how it goes.
Done Interior Art 2025 No drawing pages this time around. Just a few element symbols. Most of them were done before I finished Shadow's Ember.
0% Self edits 2025
0% Content edit TBD
0% Copy edit TBD
10% Cover art TBD Looking to contract this out again. This time around, I have an actual plan for the cover ahead of time (Not having one was a big slowdown for SE).
0% Publication TBD Planning to continue using Clovercroft Publishing for the rest of this series.
0% Marketing 2026
0% Digital release 2026?
0% Paperback 2026?

History

Date Status
2013 Let's fill some spare time before college gets any harder and scratch the itch to make a complete videogame. I've been dabbling with Roblox as an engine for long enough, so why not put all my practice to work and learn how to program too?
2018 Bye bye, Roblox! Glad to be gone. Started trying to mix together a couple of old Bionicle fanfic ideas with some themes I'd like to express. I need to get away from company-owned IPs anyway, so let's weave this into my Humanity Saga. I know just the place to squeeze it in, too.
2022 Okay, yeah I'm not going to have the right skills to make ANY version of this game for another decade at minimum. Let's focus on the story and write a good book first. It worked out for Arthur C. Clark, right?
2023 Scope is growing too large in chapter-length and the mixed perspectives are taking away my ability to focus on one decent theme. Pausing for now to go turn Tirak's chapters into its own novella for a few few months and then I'll be back. (How long could it possibly take anyway?)
November 2024 Now that Tirak's story is out the door. I'm starting return my focus on Kaleek's side of the story during my writing sessions. Rough estimate is that I might be 25% done on the manuscript's first draft, but this thing has a couple months of triage ahead of it before I can make that kind of call.
December 2024 Scope expanded again... The good news is that the size of this book is smaller now because of it. My next book is being split into 3 books to simplify the process down. This was shaping up to be at least twice the size of Shadow's Ember, but now each split book should be slightly shorter than SE.
25 January 2025 I keep distracting myself with writing the content instead of making sure the outline is finished. Plenty of progress made despite the holidays and a nasty Flu, however. Hopefully soon I can start sharing copies of the chapters with friends for feedback once I work out enough of the gaps too large to follow.
1 March 2025 Progress is going strong. Almost done ironing out kinks from the outline (I think).
5 April 2025 Over 100 pages in and I'm still trying to finish building the outline that ties each scene into an unbroken chain. I've got the broad outline of why things will happen to sell the theme and what main scenes I'll use to get there, but I'm struggling on the in-between how that gets the reader pleasantly from scene to scene. It's a hundred pages because I find myself writing more than outlining. As soon as I see what's wrong with a scene, the need to fix it gets too strong.