James C Gilliam

Eight months ago, I made a commitment to stop playing video games for a month. Much like dealing with withdraw symptoms, you seek a means to substitute the bad habit with a good one. When, I took up playing solo Dungeons and Dragons and not only had I completed a whole questline generated from dice rolls and numerous random tables from a guide book, I picked up a habit that brought me back to reading, imagining, and writing. By February, I began reviewing the numerous pages of gameplay notes, the wild story developments along the way, and started transcribing the notes into a proto-draft for the first two books. During the weekdays, I would type out my gameplay notes. During the weekends, I’d break out the notebook, rulebooks, dice, and play the game. This continued until I had finished the first three adventures, making up the first three books (in outline form).

In April, I began typing the first draft of The Sword, the Song, and the Mage. While the typing portion was considerably slower than the gameplay, I was happy to have such a thoroughly fleshed out vision for the story starting out. Essentially, the transcribed notes were the original first draft, which makes this the second draft technically. Regardless the nomenclature, the initial draft of the story is complete. Now comes the hard part: Leaving it alone for the next two weeks. I had finished the last pages just a few hours ago, now I already want to start editing. I also want to start the next book even though this one has numerous revisions to go. It’s just so tempting!

So having completed my true first, let me take a moment to someone I know who was first to take a lot of time, effort, money, and skill into developing not only her own story series, but a whole author, editor, and publishing platform. My sister, Dacia M. Arnold.

Dacia is the author of the Diazem Series of books: Apparent Power, Reactance, Shifting Power, and Resistance. She has also published Dirty Bombs: A Military Zombie Novella and The Brightest Firefly: A Collection of Short Works. Her combined works have received an average of 4.8 out of 5 stars for each and has won awards for her literary talent. You can find her main platform page and a link to her amazon page for her books.

Seems I have an exceptionally long way to go yet.

Until then…

https://www.daciamarnold.com: 2025, The year I learned to write a story… https://www.amazon.com/stores/Dacia-M-Arnold/author/B07DT6YQRZ?ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1&qid=1757595617&sr=8-1&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true&ccs_id=d80466e7-7e23-4302-816c-281421f1f933: 2025, The year I learned to write a story…