Nightmares and Ambition

I've gone back to the second draft of my first book and begun adding in several thousand words worth, adding to Paragon's own musings at the beginning of Chapters. Without giving to much of anything away, suffice it to say, Paragon is utterly evil. Even as the musings for the book occur in the aftermath of his own reconciliation, he is still difficult to portray in the medium.

Trying to provide the audience with a glimpse into the inner workings of someone like Paragon is marvelously difficult. Fortunately, I never painted myself into a corner where I had to role play him at any of my D&E SS Tables. He's frighteningly intelligent and sensitive, capable of understanding a person with frightening clarity after only a few moments conversation.

Providing someone like Numenarch with a worthy adversary was a painstaking process. Even in the earliest incarnations of the 6th House, people in my audience were enchanted by the idea of what they could do. For my own part, I was always relieved whenever participants would seek to learn more about other parts of the D&E world, leaving the 6th House to sleep unmolested.

I've put off writing the better part of Paragon's musings because I always lose sleep any time I have to try and think like him, or write like him. His writings would be filled with callow remorse lacking the temper of a truly penitent soul. Even as he writes to warn other shades to avoid the road that brought him to ruin, he speaks of all he did with a disquieting reverence.

It is said many times during the course of the story, that not all that has been done, can be undone. Paragon wasn't the source of that saying, but he certainly leant it great credence with his actions. I've been careful to avoid the specifics of his crimes, because I want a decently young reader to still have access to the book. When I write the book devoted to his own travels, I'll have to tip-toe around most of what he did leaving it up to the reader's imagination.

Where I used to delight in writing about all things morbid and bloody, I have quickly lost any taste for it doing the pages and pages of background works for the 6th House and Paragon. It is as if I took all that was ugly and terrible that resided within my mind and poured it into the paper for that particular project.

So much the better.