Hi Everyone. This is my first substantial update for the newly christened Aethereal Engineer, and a much needed update for Aethereal Engines, which hasn’t seen any new material added in about two and a half months at this point. So much for trying to post an update every 4-6 weeks! Sheesh!
While that has been a disappointment, I can’t be too upset because it isn’t like I haven’t been writing that whole time! I am very pleased with my latest creation, and at almost 14,000 words today and more to come, it already is the size of three beefy chapter additions to The Pool of Sacred Stars. If I had been posting it up in chunks like I do with Stars, I would be exceeding my expectations.
Why haven’t I been doing this? For one, I want to complete this story in full before I release it in its final form. I am already glad that I made this choice as there have been several revisions for the better so far, revisions that would have been very difficult and unseemly to do if I had been releasing the story as I wrote it. Secondly, when I started Aethereal Engines and wrote and posted the first and second chapters of Stars, I did so as soon as I could find the time to do so. I had no “buffer” work to post to meet my self-imposed deadlines so I was scrambling to get content created and up.
I’m a guy working more than full time to make a living, so in between sleep, work, recreation, and family fun / needs, the time I have to write can be really inconsistent. Getting a quality post up on time can be a challenge. If I had a buffer, something ready to go that I am just sitting on as I release it at planned intervals while I am working on the new things to be released after that, I would be a step or more ahead and everyone would benefit. Although I didn’t start this new project to function as the start of a buffer for Aethereal Engines, that is how I have come to see it as it has grown.
By now, you are probably wondering about just what this new story is. I am currently calling it The Lost Tomb of Omo and it is going to be a sword and sorcery tale. With it, I’m trying to capture some of the adventurous feel of R.E. Howard and L. Sprague de Camp’s Conan stories that have inspired me since my youth, while approaching the characters with more heart and depth and with my own voice as a writer. There is also a definite, if subtitle, dash of H.P. Lovecraft’s style added to the mix as well. I truly love most of his work and want to honor the legacy of the Howard-Lovecraft friendship and collaborations.
Omo is going to be a standalone story independent from The Pool of Sacred Stars serial, which will start up again with regular installments after I have released the entirety of Omo. The Lost Tomb of Omo isn’t set in the same world as Stars, with it having its own flavor and details that have grown beautify on their own as I have written the story. It’s really feeling epic as I’m writing it and I get happier with each revision of the text!
At this point, I feel that I am about halfway done with Omo and when it is finished the story will be a novella of 30,000 to 40,000 words in length. That would be six to eight posts to AE depending on how I broke it up, and I plan to release the parts contiguously every few weeks. And all the while during that time, with Omo done, I plan to return to Stars and create more chapters for that serial novel to maintain those “steps ahead” when I start up that story again… Never fear, I have every intent of finishing The Pool of Sacred Stars!
Take care dear reader, and be well!
~Jason.
Aethereal Engineer 
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